Dr Bunhead’s Tutorial 1 – Paying Attention to the Kids

Over the weekend I received an email from Dr Bunhead with feedback from what he saw at our first schools outing.  It is long and full of alot of useful stuff, and has arrived at the perfect time.  The last two sessions have shown that we are ontop of the technical issues with the workshops, and that the imagineers are comfortable with the material.  Its now time to start refining our communications techniques. 

I do not want to overwhelm the imagineers with all of the tips all at once.  Good habits are developed one step at a time.  As we are fortunate enough to have pleanty of opportunities to practice I am going to provide staged tutorials, so that the imagineers will have one new thing to practice at their next outing. 

So Tutorial 1 – Paying Attention to the Kids

1) Paying Attention to the Kids – speech
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Avoid long periods where you are not talking with the kids. Keep talking with the kids, even general chit-chat, in order to build rapport with them. That way they will be more likely to engage and contribute positively to your workshop. Remember kids love attention (most of us do). They enjoy the attention of adults so just sitting with them whilst they make something can provide them tremendous silent encouragement and enhance their confidence to try things they are unsure of.

2) Paying Attention to the Kids – eye contact
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Avoid turning your back on kids. If you’re getting things sorted out try to do it whilst still facing them and engaging them by telling them what you’re doing and why. Otherwise the message you give them is that you are not interested in them anymore, so they have no need to show any interest in you. That makes it OK to chat / muck around. You will then have to reel them back into the workshop again.

3) Paying Attention to the Kids – eye level
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Get down to eye-level of kids if standing beside them, try to avoid to big a gap in eye-level.

At your next event, concentrate on improving this one aspect of your interaction with the children.