Today I met with Mr Holl in activities for our weekly mentor meeting. We talked about my recent juggling endevours (see video below) and the people I've been trying to contact in the community. Many people in my WISE class (thanks jimmy and jordan!) have suggested that I clown for those adorable kids we see everyday in the Tots and Teens program. Since their door is always closed I was really hesitant to walk up and just knock; I didn't want to interrupt anything important or come at a bad time. A few have you many have seen me lurking around D-building earlier today, trying to decide what the best course of action would be. Fortunately, Mr. Holl suggested that I knock quietly and ask if it was a good time, using my most polite manners of course.
Emboldened by our conversation, I left activties and went right to their door, only to find it open and the kids gone! I timidly walked in and was greeted by a really kind, enthusaistic woman who was so excited about my project! We scheduled my clowning for April 12th, 2nd period. When I introduced my name, she was even more excited because apparently she was a close friend of my aunts and knew my entire dads family. Who knew she worked right at the high school! Overall it was a great success and I shouldn't have been nervous about asking. We agreed that I would stop by the week before and make sure it was still a good day.
Mr. Holl also suggested that I start finding schools and classrooms I can clown in during may and june and make contacts with teachers because the last months of school will be upon us before we know it.
Monday, March 28, 2011
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Jokes!
What's big and grey and flys straight up?
An elecopter!
Why were the elephants thrown out of the swimming pool?
Because they couldn't hold their trunks up!
http://www.jokesnjokes.net/funny.jokes.amusing.humor.laughs/Kids/kideleph001.htm
An elecopter!
Why were the elephants thrown out of the swimming pool?
Because they couldn't hold their trunks up!
http://www.jokesnjokes.net/funny.jokes.amusing.humor.laughs/Kids/kideleph001.htm
Community Contacts
Over the past week I've been trying to get some help from the community on my project. The first thing I tried was looking up when the Cornell juggling clubs meets, because I've been having trouble moving past my simple three ball cascade and on to more difficult things. I emailed the listed president of the club who emailed back very quickly with some disappointing news. Their club has dissolved and no longer meets regularly, to my sadness and frustration. I really need someone who knows good tricks to show me how to do them. While learning from The Juggling Book has been extremely helpful, having someone who went through the same learning problems is what I needed. Fortunately Jared Dominguez was super helpful and gave me a whole list of sources that I could learn from
http://www.twjc.co.uk/tutorials.html as well as great advice with what to learn next. He said work on more three ball tricks such as columns and then practice two balls in each hand going continually until you're very comfortable and then I should start with four. He also said I could contact him with any questions I had later in the project! I've been working on my columns and my right hand with two balls and slowly but surely each day I've been getting a bit better.
I also emailed Hilby the German Juggling Boy on tuesday, with no repsonse. I'm planning on calling this coming week because I think he would really help me develop a routine with a few pointers after seeing the videos on his website http://www.hilby.net/who.html. And after all this project is all about interactions with others. I'm assuming my best resources will be other clowns.
Lastly, I've been searching the Cornell and Ithaca College websites for the past hour trying to find a professor in the physcology or sociology departments who specializes in humor development or sociaal interactions through jokes but as it turns out, no one specializes in that directly. So I'm trying to search through people who's backgrounds look close to those topics and email them with my project idea and ask for their thoughts on what people find funny.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Check list
I <3 To-Do lists! But seriously they're great for keeping myself organized. This upcoming week I will...
Perfect my sword balloon
Contact someone from the Tot and Teens Program-clown for them in april?
Keep researching humor development
Contact someone at either IC or Cornell from a physcology dept who can talk to me about humor
Perfect my sword balloon
Contact someone from the Tot and Teens Program-clown for them in april?
Keep researching humor development
Contact someone at either IC or Cornell from a physcology dept who can talk to me about humor
Research Week
So this past week has been pretty research heavy, but I think I really needed to take the time to sit down and figure some things out. I started learning about how humor develops in children and what people think is funny. As it turns out, theres no good way to define what people think is funny, it varies from culture to culture, between languages, it depends on your upbringing and simply your taste. However a recognition of humor is something that every person is born with. Within one week of being born, babies smile for the first time and by four months of age we all were laughing. Laughter is unconscience, and forced laughter is often difficult to produce, as we all know.
From my experience at the carnival I learned that the age of the child you're talking to matter so much! Any one under 10 didn't think my riddles were funny at all but when I hit myself with my juggling balls, now that was just hilarious. As it turns out, preschoolers to middle elementary aged kids are still learning to process words and double meanings, so riddles really mean nothing to them. They will be more amused by physical humor and rhymes, twisting of sounds and goofy words repeated over and over. By later elementary age to middle school the play on words in riddles becomes more amusing and as children as learning to create jokes themselves and expanding their vocabulary, riddles become more natural to them. By high school, people are entertained by situational humor. People tell stories and often laugh at the surprising outcome or the unexpected twist.While riddles still can be funny, they are often met with groans.
When trying to be funny you have to understand the time and the place to employ the humor as well as have good timing. You can't be afraid to laugh at yourself and trust your innate sense of humor, after all we are born with the ability to laugh. You should draw from what you already know to be funny, but also broaden your horizons and test out different types of humor that you aren't always comfortable with. Think silly and focus on the benfits of being a goofball.
This research helps me get a better of idea of how to be entertaining to all different age groups, although my primary focus is on younger children. I want to keep persuing this line of research because I think it is a key piece to my project, I won't be a very good clown if I'm not funny. This week I also researched some different sites with videos and written out instructions on how to make sword balloons because I popped so many of them at the carnival and I need to practice before my next event!
From my experience at the carnival I learned that the age of the child you're talking to matter so much! Any one under 10 didn't think my riddles were funny at all but when I hit myself with my juggling balls, now that was just hilarious. As it turns out, preschoolers to middle elementary aged kids are still learning to process words and double meanings, so riddles really mean nothing to them. They will be more amused by physical humor and rhymes, twisting of sounds and goofy words repeated over and over. By later elementary age to middle school the play on words in riddles becomes more amusing and as children as learning to create jokes themselves and expanding their vocabulary, riddles become more natural to them. By high school, people are entertained by situational humor. People tell stories and often laugh at the surprising outcome or the unexpected twist.While riddles still can be funny, they are often met with groans.
When trying to be funny you have to understand the time and the place to employ the humor as well as have good timing. You can't be afraid to laugh at yourself and trust your innate sense of humor, after all we are born with the ability to laugh. You should draw from what you already know to be funny, but also broaden your horizons and test out different types of humor that you aren't always comfortable with. Think silly and focus on the benfits of being a goofball.
This research helps me get a better of idea of how to be entertaining to all different age groups, although my primary focus is on younger children. I want to keep persuing this line of research because I think it is a key piece to my project, I won't be a very good clown if I'm not funny. This week I also researched some different sites with videos and written out instructions on how to make sword balloons because I popped so many of them at the carnival and I need to practice before my next event!
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Mentor Meeting
Mr Holl and I met 7th period today and discussed how my project has been progressing so far. I went over all of the details of the carnival, most of them positive. I mentioned that I kept popping my swords and Mr Holl mentioned his friend who was a balloon animal whiz said when you keep popping it means you're overfilling. Next time I'm practicing those swords I will try being less generous with my pumping. I explained how I wanted to focus my research, with my macro topics encompassing interactions with people; what they find funny, why do they find it funny, how does the recognition of humor develop as you get older? and my micro topics of research being the fundamental skills of being a clown; juggling, balloons and jokes. Mr Holl suggested I contact a professor at Syracuse, Robert Thompson who specializes in popular culture, tv and basically the science behind entertainment. Thanks Mr Holl!
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