Puppets can be a valuable tool in the classroom. There are wonderful ways you can incorporate puppetry in the class, whether in a formal school or in homeschooling.
As a professional educational consultant to public and private schools, and as a homeschooling parent, I have found five ways puppetry can be used to help and motivate students.
- Develop teamworking skills
- Develop public speaking skills and confidence
- Build students’ confidence through new activities such as designing and building puppets and props.
- Encourage creative writing
- As a teaching tool to grab students’ attention and present material in an engaging and memorable manner.
Puppetry has so much to offer people of any age. From writing scripts to singing, and dancing, to building sets and props.
Creating your own puppet production is a great way to flex your creative muscles. It’s also a wonderful social activity.
Develop teamworking skills
Whether you’re making costumes or paying the lead character, you must have respect for all the members of the cast and crew who are working hard for the same vision. In other words, puppetry can build teamwork among students as each exercises their own skills and develop new ones.
Students can learn to appreciate those with different abilities than their own and see where each individual has something to bring to the project.
This is an important life lesson, too. We need to see one another in light of their abilities and contributions as opposed to their limitations.
And nothing is better than the applause from the audience when the production is over. We all enjoy a little praise and appreciation.
I believe there are many great benefits to using puppets with kids. The creative journey a child’s mind must take when making a puppet is a mental exercise that has powerful developmental rewards.
Develop public speaking skills and confidence
When they work on a puppet with me that I am going to sell, they learn what it is to earn a dollar and they are part of it.
In the classroom, teachers can use puppetry to draw shy students out of their shells. Often those who are not confident enough to speak in front of others will find freedom in “hiding behind a puppet stage” and speaking through a puppet.
This confidence can transfer over to their everyday interactions with others.
Students who may struggle with bookwork can find new self-confidence when they work with their hands to build a stage or make a puppet.
Ellie sings with her puppets. She taught herself ventriloquism and it gives her confidence in front of people.
Build students’ confidence through new activities such as designing and building puppets and props.
Puppetry influences artistic abilities and social skills and can break mental barriers.
It’s a chance for kids to experiment and discover skills and talents in themselves they didn’t know they had.
This can instill a higher level of self-worth and instill a child with moral accountability for their actions.
I feel that I have been positively affected by my puppetry. I have learned new skills, such as sewing, sculpting and latex casting. Skills applicable to far much more than just puppetry.
Teaching my children to design and create their own puppets has been a great way for us to spend time together. It compliments their homeschooling as well as providing a creative outlet for them.
Their sense of accomplishment when they finish a puppet reinforces their willingness and desire to try other new things.
Encourage creative writing
Creative writing can be so much more fun when you are writing a puppet script or creating a character.
When a child opens their imagination to what a character can be, young, old, sweet, mean, etc., they now have something unique to write.
As they develop that character through a script, the creative writing process can become easy and fun as ideas flow from their head to their pen. This is a skill they will be able to use throughout their school career as they write reports and essays.
As a teaching tool to grab students’ attention and present material in an engaging and memorable manner.
Lastly, a teacher can use puppets themselves to introduce ideas to their classroom.
A puppet can be a teacher or a reluctant student in the hands of a teacher. Picture Charlie McCarthy and Edgar Bergen and their conversations and think how that sort of interaction with a puppet could become a memorable teaching moment for your students.
A teacher does not need to be a ventriloquist or have a stage to use a puppet in the classroom. As puppetry skills are developed, the presentation can be so interesting that students don’t care that you are holding the puppet and your lips are moving.
Here is a video of me teaching a Bible verse to students with a puppet at a Vacation Bible School program. Notice my lips are moving, yet the children are laughing and internalizing the lesson.
A puppet can sing (lip-sync) a teaching song. Play the music and have your puppet “sing along.”
If your puppet has an arm rod, or is a live arm style puppet, you can attach a pointer to its hand and let it point to a blackboard as he speaks. A puppet can recite poetry, or answer questions.
Be creative. A puppet is a great visual tool.
Here is a video teaching basic puppetry techniques that can help you to learn to control your puppet or to teach your classroom. My daughters help me in the video, operating the puppets, and they were 9 at the time.
Even recycling can be part of the lessons learned as what would normally be discarded becomes puppets. Learning to repurpose materials is great for the student, as they use their imagination to integrate various items into their puppet, and it’s good for the environment, too.
All -in- all, puppetry opens up a wide variety of ways teachers and parents can teach, influence and motivate their children.
Be sure to check out the rest of the blog for ideas on creating and using puppets. Puppet Building World Home
