Becky’s Box of Puppets
ELE Experience: Purposeful Puppets – Creating a puppet involves deliberate and thoughtful planning. Scale, dimension, texture, color, materials and movement are considered. We start with a story, theme or subject. The ultimate goal is to create a puppet that through movement and voice will dramatize or impart information on a said particular story, theme or subject. Students use simple materials to create a puppet of their choice which will be used to dramatize stories created by teams of students. (Visit link for additional info.)
Program Description: Using simple materials, usually socks, fabrics, decorative items and recyclables and using a variety of construction techniques, students will design and build a puppet. They will experience the pleasure of creating out of a hodge-podge of whatnots and perhaps learn a new skill such as sewing. This new life form intimately connected with the student is the vehicle by which a new thought, idea, information or feeling is experienced and expressed through simple puppet presentations behind the puppet theater.
“I was skeptical at first in giving up a week of instructional time, but what an AMAZING journey I watched them go on. The creativity that you got flowing was awesome. They got much more out of the book than they ever would have without the week of puppet making”. — Testimony from Tracey Jackson, Pepperhill Elementary
Sample Lessons
3rd-8th Grade: ELA and Visual Arts: Choosing favorite characters from books and making them into puppets is a great way to understand a story and the complexities of human nature. Giving the puppet ensemble voice by acting out a variety of scenes is rewarding and fun!
7th-8th Grades: Physical Science: Quantum mechanics and puppets? Yes! Students will design and create high-functioning puppets based on basic principles of quantum mechanics-hello, helium! Then we put our characters into action as students produce short original plays or musical lyrics using keywords and theories to entertain the middle school brain in clever and entertaining ways!
Puppets can work beautifully with just about every subject. If you have an idea and the desire to bring the pleasure and rewards of puppetry to your students let’s make a plan!
SC Standards for Drama Addressed During this Experience:
T3-2.1 Develop body control through pantomime and character portrayal.
T4-2.2 Develop vocal control and expression to interpret characters in improvisations, scripts, and literary works.
T5-6.4 Identify and use a variety of theatrical conventions (for example, puppets, masks, props) in theatre activities.
T6-2.5 Research and observe people to create characters.
T7-1.1 Improvise characters, environments, dialogue, and action both individually and in groups.
T8-2.7 Act as an improvised or scripted character in an ensemble.
