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Dear Educator: One of the best-loved movies of all times is capturing hearts in a whole new way: as a hit Broadway musical! Now beginning its fourth acclaimed year at the historic New Amsterdam Theatre on 42nd Street, MARY POPPINS has dazzled and delighted almost two million people. Disney On Broadway invites you to add the magic of live theatre to your class plans with special group discount tickets to this Tony Award®- winning musical. Call today to learn more about creating a magical group experience for your students—800-439-9000. See for yourself how MARY POPPINS can enhance your curriculum with this free class activity pack, created by Disney On Broadway in cooperation with the award-winning curriculum specialists at Young Minds Inspired. Inside you’ll find standards-based activities in language arts, social studies, visual arts, and music and dance, along with a special limited-edition wall poster for your classroom. Please be sure to photocopy the activity pages to share with colleagues before you put your poster on display. The start of a new school year is the perfect time to schedule a Broadway field trip, so don’t miss this chance to give your students a theatrical learning experience they will remember all their lives. JOIN US! You and a guest are invited to join us for FREE on Thursday, October 8 or Thursday, Teacher October 15 at a performance of MARY POPPINS. Come and experience Broadway’s Appreciation perfectly magical musical firsthand so you can better incorporate this guide into your Nights lessons and plan a future trip for your class. Space is limited, so please reserve your October 8 & 15 magical experience now. RSVP to [email protected]. is the only company developing free, innovative classroom materials that is owned and directed by award-winning former teachers. Visit our website at www.ymiclassroom.com to send feedback and to download more free programs. For questions, contact us at 1-800-859-8005 or e-mail us at [email protected]. © 2009 YMI, Inc. © Disney sweeps’ kingdom. SHOW SYNOPSIS Many young boys took It’s the turn of the 20th century in on this dangerous job London, and 17 Cherry Tree Lane is in because it was easy for desperate need of help! With yet them to get inside the another nanny fleeing the premises, chimney. Have students Jane and Michael Banks wish for a research the lives, “perfect” replacement. Amid the dangers, and urban protests of their worried mother legends surrounding the and stern father, Mary Poppins job of a chimney sweep magically appears. The original and write a job description super-nanny proceeds to turn for a chimney sweep that the household upside-down DID YOU KNOW? might be posted on an in an attempt to whip its Mary flies out 110 feet through Internet job site. residents into tip-top the house of the New Amsterdam • In Edwardian England, shape. A bewitched Theatre. In the play’s three years everyone had his or her nursery, surprising on Broadway, Mary has traveled place in society. There was adventures in the park, and more than 24 miles over the upper class (royalty, an unauthorized trip to the audiences’ heads. nobility, and very rich); upper- bank show the children middle class (wealthy another side of their father and bankers, lawyers, doctors, remind George Banks about merchants); lower-middle something long forgotten, yet class (shopkeepers, vitally important. managers, civil servants, small manufacturers); DID YOU KNOW? working class (chimney LANGUAGE ARTS sweeps, farmers, factory ACTIVITIES Three boys and three girls are workers, house always employed to play Jane and servants), and lower • When Mary Poppins takes Bert Michael Banks. They have tutors class (the homeless and the children into the magical while in rehearsal and are required and destitute). Ask world of the paintings in the park, to do schoolwork when they students to draw all of the characters leap into are not on stage. parallels to classes in imagination. Have students look at today’s society. landscape paintings and write a world of fantasy, we story about what it would be like to wanted the children to have be in one of the paintings. something to bring back with them, VISUAL ARTS • Have students hone their debate a talisman.” That is how the word ACTIVITIES skills by presenting opposing supercalifragilisticexpialidocious was opinions to questions like: Are born. Have students define • MARY POPPINS was a book, a film, chores important for children? talisman. Then have them write a and now a Broadway musical. Should we have homework? What one-sentence description of a joyful Brainstorm the differences and is the most important lesson the moment in their lives and five similarities of these art forms. Use a Banks children learned from Mary? adjectives that describe that Venn diagram to depict these ideas. The most important lesson their moment. Finally, have them break Lead a discussion about the parents learned? up those words and reassemble opportunities and limitations of each • Mary tells the children that objects them to create their own talisman. of these media and how they affect around us can seem magical if we the way the story is told. let them. Have students write a • In the show, Mary flies, a bed short story about an object they use SOCIAL STUDIES appears out of thin air, and toys every day. What magical properties come to life. Ask students to could it hold? How might it help or ACTIVITIES become theatre artists and harm people? • MARY POPPINS takes place in brainstorm ways they could create • A story has a beginning, middle, London in 1910, when everyone got these “magical effects” on the and end, but a character’s life their news from the newspaper. Have stage. continues after the curtain falls. Ask students create their own 1910 • The job of a set designer like Tony students to write their own play newspaper and include articles about Award®-winner Bob Crowley is to describing what happens to one of the role of women and children in create the physical world of the play the MARY POPPINS characters British society and Britain’s place in or musical. Have students create a after the ending. the world. Ask them to include their poster of a setting of their own • Richard Sherman, one of the play’s own advertisement for a new nanny. imagination based on what they songwriters, said, “When Mary • During the early 20th century, the have learned about early 20th- Poppins takes the children into the rooftops of London were the chimney century London. writing. So, choreography means can be depicted in movement. MUSIC & DANCE dance writing—using dance to tell • The song “Step in Time” is a ACTIVITIES a story. Ask students to develop spectacular tap dance number in • Songs let us know more about the dance movements, gestures, or MARY POPPINS. Ask students to characters’ thoughts, feelings, and body language that portray learn about these tap dance actions. Play one or more of the happiness, sadness, anger, courage, steps—the shuffle and the flap— songs from MARY POPPINS for the and wonder. and try doing eight counts of each, class and ask students to write what • Have students create a short dance alternating feet. They can even try it tells them about the characters with a beginning, middle, and end shuffling or flapping to the side or and how they think the song moves based on one of the scenes and back. If they have the music to the story forward. characters. They can either use “Step in Time,” they can create • Tell students that the word music from the show or music of their own tap choreography. choreography comes from two their choice. Suggest that they Greek words: “khoros” or consider how the character changes in the scene and how that change ADDITIONAL “dancing,” and “graphia” or RESOURCES National Standards Met By Suggested Activities For MARY POPPINS • Download the Complete Study Guide to MARY POPPINS for free: Language Arts Writing strategies Practicing effective, Understanding the www.marypoppins.com/studyguide to target specific purposeful human experience • How Does The Show Go On? audiences communication through literature An Introduction To The Theatre, by Social Studies Understanding family Describing urban life Comparing key Thomas Schumacher, Producer of life in different in various cultures elements of family the Tony Award®-Winning Broadway time periods in history life as affected by Musical, THE LION KING, with Jeff various cultural factors Kurti. Disney Editions, 2007. • MARY POPPINS Anything Can Visual Arts Tailoring media Describing how Comparing art forms Happen If You Let It, The Story approaches to expressive features that share subject Behind the Journey from Books to communication goals can create responses matter or cultural context Broadway, by Brian Sibley and Michael Lassel. Disney Editions. Music and Creating and Perceiving diverse Describing how • The New Amsterdam, The Dance arranging music to cultures through music relates to Biography of a Broadway Theatre, accompany music comprehension other educational by Mary C. Henderson. Hyperion. performances disciplines THE HISTORIC NEW AMSTERDAM THEATRE When the New Amsterdam Theatre first opened its doors to its toll: mushrooms with the public in October 1903, it was the most anticipated event caps the size of large of the Broadway season. Today, a visit to the New Amsterdam dinner plates and a tree Theatre provides guests with a unique opportunity to were growing out of experience its beautifully restored art and architecture. the orchestra pit, and frozen waterfalls had Nicknamed “The House Beautiful,” the building is fallen where the box considered to be the first in the United States to employ seats once hung.

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