A Puppet Show
Over the holidays, I had the pleasure of putting on a puppet show with the kids.
It was my honey’s idea was to engage the kids in something different than their everyday Bionicles or videogames. They were first resistant to the idea, and during rehearsals everyone got frustrated, but in the end everyone agreed it worked out well.
The Steps to Putting on a Home Puppet Show
First of all, it’s hard work. We had to:
- Build a puppet stage – my honey did most of it, constructing a serviceable puppet stage out of cardboard that she had saved.
- Write a script - again, here my lovely partner came up with the script. She said it was actually the hardest part, to come up with something that was easy for the kids to say or read, and that also had a good lesson for them to take away.
- Rehearse -Rehearsing got a bit frustrating at times, but the idea was to instill in the kids that everything worthwhile takes effort and practice. The more you practice, the better you get.
- Let me take over – The original idea was for the kids to do the whole show: read the script and act with the hand puppet. However, it turned out that was a lot harder for them to read and emote with their spoken voices AND try to remember they’re supposed to manipulate the puppet as well. The younger brother actually kept turning his hand toward himself, meaning that Winnie-the-Pooh always had his head turned away from the audience. In the end, I stepped in to do the puppetry. Luckily, I was raised on the Muppet Show, Sesame Street, and Mr. Rogers and so things worked out. It was a lot of fun, actually.
The Effects of a Puppet Show
Afterwards, when I reflect on what we did, it’s clear that kids can learn a lot from puppet shows because (and why Sesame Street has been around so long):
- It’s entertaining – so it’s easy to broach different ideas and not seem like you’re trying to preach. It’s no wonder shows like Sesame Street and such are popular.
- It’s memorable – in this case, because the kids were directly involved in the production, I think it will be a fondly remembered experience in years to come. We shall see. At least they love watching the video of the show.
- It teaches them timing – Well, at least they were introduced to the idea — they can still use a lot of practice, but now they have at least one beginning lesson on how to emote and act.
- It provides a sense of accomplishment – Again, because they were involved, it was obvious the experience provided a big boost to their self-esteems. They were beaming during the applause.
It was hard work, but a lot of fun, and I’m glad for the experience, both for myself and for the kids.
We’ll have to see if we’ll do more in the future.
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