Action Tips: Perform for Kids in Hospitals

Kids in hospitals can always use a volunteer to lift their spirits. Use your artistic creativity to make the child’s hospital stay more interesting.

Choose your art

Decide on what you’ll perform. If you’re going solo you can:

• Play guitar or keyboard
• Perform magic tricks
• Read from a book
• Perform a monologue

Better yet, get friends or classmates together so that you can:

• Play instruments as a group
• Perform skits from funny plays or movies
• Do improve activities

Talk to the hospital

• Call, email, or talk in person to the hospital.
• Ask them who handles volunteers.
• Then tell that leader which kind of performance you want to do.
• Decide together if you can go room to room or if your group needs a big space to perform (i.e. somewhere to plug in electric guitars)

Choose your material

Before showing up to the hospital, decide a few different types of material that you’ll need to prepare.

For Music – prepare popular songs you know the kids can sing along too. You can always do original stuff, too. Just make sure everything you perform is kid-appropriate (i.e. no curse words)

For Acting and Improv – use physical material. Kids laugh at slapstick humor, so have stuff where your silly characters fall down, squirt water at one another, make funny faces, etc. Again, make sure everything is kid appropriate.

For Books – choose one with pictures that you can show when you’re done reading the page.

For magicians – just don’t saw anyone in half. Otherwise, you’re good.