Down by the Station

Integrating the Dramas into the Program

The dramas used in this program have been based on a series of lessons on the Good Shepherd, Psalm 23 and The Lost Sheep - Sample Lesson available from Resource Room at Danielle's Place.  This is a subscription site (highly recommended by this MSSS Crafts) - for more information on how to subscribe to this site click here.  To get a full idea on how to implement these lessons you will need to have access to the original dramas.

However, in using these dramas I have made a few changes.  Because the dramas are the intellectual property of Carolyn Warvel, the creator of Danielle's Place, I am not able to give the exact changes I made in the programs.  And because I (Train Driver) was working with the character of Mary (played by a good friend), we mainly adlibbed (though this was planned and practiced!) in order to create natural conversation, rather than following a highly scripted drama.  Below is a summary of the things we did in order to bring to life the dramas, the characters of Mary and Woolly (who was really merely a stuffed toy though dearly loved!) and the message of a Heavenly Father who loves little children very much.

• Danielle's Place has the dialogues occurring between the lesson teacher and Woolly, the puppet.  In Down by the Station, the dialogues occurred between the Train Driver and Mary.  Mainly, Mary described the children the things that Woolly was doing.  We also did not want to personify Woolly but recognise that she was merely a sheep!
• We simplified some of the ideas given in the original dramas, recognising that our audience was slightly younger than the target group in the original lessons.
• We also fitted the drama around the songs we sang, moving between drama and singing songs (though these were chosen to enhance the telling of the story).
• In Lesson Five, the character Woolly pretends to be is a train driver, in keeping with our week's theme (this was the only time we deviated a little from not personifying Woolly - though Mary took responsibility for the pretence!).
• In Lesson Six, we used the names Goodness and Love as we had based the program on the New International Readers Version (NIrV) of Psalm 23.
• It is vital for the success of the message that children be allowed to interact with Woolly - let them touch, hold and pat Woolly during and after the program.  Children of this age connect very well to the characters of Mary and Woolly (Clementine, a few months after the program, still talks of both fondly!).  It is in doing this that the children gain a glimpse of the love of a Heavenly Father for someone as little as them.