Alright, so if you've a bunch of kids on a weekend afternoon and you want them to be entertained so that their parent - your friends - can be entertained by means of relief, what do you do?
Engage someone, a clown or a magician, to do the job. Yes I say job because it's no joke entertaining kids. Don't talk about their wide range of interests (yes they have r-a-n-g-e, like us adults), there's the age gaps, the gender, and oh my, just the sheer energy required to keep 1 child engaged, not to mention a dozen.
If you would sit through Okto channel on a typical weekday noon, you would have watch a handful of half hour kids programs ranging from cartoons with content, cartoons with silly content, silly make-believe dinosaurs that talks, teach and sing, a bunch of adolescents singing and prancing, and so on. Not to name names, but in my humble Mummy opinion, only Hi-5 is worth the time. Even I enjoy the song and dance routines.
So here's the thing about live kids entertainment: I have a hunch that it's not easy to find entertainers worth your hard earned Mummy money. I have not had a chance to engage any, but from my internet surf, I can mention 3 that I will try if and when I get to organise 3 parties.
They are - I stress - not exhaustive and a matter of personal opinion. Mummy to mummy sharing that this is.
1. Sweetheart the clown - www.partywithsweetheart.com
I am engaging her cos she is simply the first clown I know as a person to be a clown as her occupation, and thereby the longest serving clown I know personally. If she's not good she wouldn't have lasted so long. My best friend once engaged her to entertain the kids at her wedding, and Sweetheart did not disappoint. She had the children trailing after her like pipe piper in God-knows-what-they-doing. Off duty, I spoke to her briefly and she came across as pretty professional.
Sweetheart charges $250 for a half hour show, and includes balloon sculpture in her acts.
2. Professor Popcorn - www.funengineerz.com.sg
I only had to drop an enquiry and I got a warm and ready response with the info I needed hte very next day. Kudos to Prof for being so on-the-ball! Responsiveness seems to be a vanishing value nowadays in one-man businesses so when others take this as "probably very free", I take this as professional.
I have seen Prof Popcorn perform his magic tricks from outside a function room, and I must say the kids are engaged. Perhaps it is the occasion when I bumped into him while he was rushing to the function room that made me see the stern side of him....
Prof Popcorn does a 1 hr show including balloon sculture and a few other add ons as well, for $300.
3. Magic Empire - www.themagicempire.com
I only serve this dude's website and watched his promotional videos on Youtube. He has 5 personas that involve largely ventriloquism. All seem funny except for the clown one - Billy Bonkers - which seemed funniest, and not surprisingly, more expensive.
Besides Billy Bonkers' fees that costs $349, the other 4 personas charge $299 for an hour's show including balloon sculpture.
I hope to discover more kids entertainers who genuinely enjoy what they do and love kids. Really, it's hard to tell these because I always thought I'm a kids-disliker. ;)
Kudos to all of them in the industry. I certainly am unable to entertain children who are not mine day in day out. Even my own child - whom I deeply love believe me - I can probably do it for only like...a day?! These entertainers deserve the *applause*.
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