Great Project Ideas
The sky is the limit!!!
Because Puppetry encompasses all major art forms, it can be easily modified to integrate any teaching or character building objectives you may have. To follow are just a few ideas to inspire you.
Virtually any theme you choose can integrate elegantly into a tailored art of puppetry workshop, resulting in moments your students will never forget. We have done everything from intricate carving and woodworking, and tiny floating little water puppets, to black lit characters, to giant story books from which creatures emerge! No two of my workshops are ever quite the same. You tell me what you want to teach; I make it fun and memorable.
Please contact me for additional ideas and information, specific to your objectives.
Kindergarten and 1st Grade
Ocean Life - Kindergarten students delight to make their own sting ray hand puppets and "aquarium" in which they can create a sting ray petting station complete with musical accompaniment, such as Saint Saens Le Carnaval des Animaux'.
Story telling and creative thinking - Students play theater games and practice sound effects, expression of feelings and ideas.
Of course, theater games can be implemented by any grade level with age appropriate choices.
2nd - 3th Grade
Insects - "Real" and fanciful designed insects, with the correct anatomy and actual movable parts are assembled and creep around the room.
Where Wild Things Are - Are you interested in a school performance with literary integration? Each class, in a chosen grade level, adopts a Wild Thing and builds him/her larger than life! Theatrical skills, song, and dramatic reading are incorporated bring the entire grade to the stage in a performance sure to delight parents and all audience members.
Character Building and Writing Skills - Students and teacher brainstorm as a class to create stories with a lesson, such as reinforcing appropriate methods for dealing with bullies. Scenery and puppets are built to act out stories.
3rd - 5th grade
SC History - Students bring history to life as they create historical figure puppets, then they work in groups to write and perform short skits for each other. They will remember these historical men and woman forever!
Language Arts - Creative writing, paragraph structure, and poetry can all be integrated into a puppetry workshop. Through Puppets and Poetry, students use simple mouth puppets and hand movement to learn alliteration, haiku, and other poetry forms. Motivation for creative writing is heightened when students are planning a play! Think Peter Pan for paragraph structure. "Hook" gives us the first line, supporting characters each improvise supporting sentences, while Peter Pan offers a conclusion.
Cultural studies - Vietnamese Water Puppets, Japanese Bunraku, Indonesian Shadow, Chinese Lion Dance, European Marionettes and Punch and Judy style hand puppets, can be used to teach world culture. How do ideas and tradition compare to our own? How can we be enriched by learning about other cultures?
Middle School
Greek Mythology - Imagine filling your classroom with recreations of Medusa, Pegasus, and Icarus, or any other figure your students choose to research and present!
Alice in Wonderland - For a literary performance idea, Lewis Carroll's fanciful characters are designed to perform along with a real human student playing Alice. Do your students play in the band? They can create their own sound effects and musical accompaniment for the performance. Your students fill all the roles on stage and behind the scenes to learn how to put on a play.
High School
Visual Arts - High school students design and build original artistic pieces of their own choosing, from intricate Indonesian shadow puppets to mechanical figures which may be either displayed gallery style or used in performance for younger groups.
Theater - Scenes and stories from the great playwrights (such as Shakespeare), literary works (such as Wu Cheng'en's Journey to the West), or your students' own original writings are built and performed, using a wide variety of puppetry methods, techniques, and styles.
These are only a few workshop themes which have proved highly successful in my classroom visits, both academically and artistically. There really is no end to what can be done in your classroom with puppetry. Your students will look forward to coming to class every day! Please contact me for ideas for specific standards you would like to teach with puppetry, or objectives you would like to reach.
The sky is the limit!!!
Because Puppetry encompasses all major art forms, it can be easily modified to integrate any teaching or character building objectives you may have. To follow are just a few ideas to inspire you.
Virtually any theme you choose can integrate elegantly into a tailored art of puppetry workshop, resulting in moments your students will never forget. We have done everything from intricate carving and woodworking, and tiny floating little water puppets, to black lit characters, to giant story books from which creatures emerge! No two of my workshops are ever quite the same. You tell me what you want to teach; I make it fun and memorable.
Please contact me for additional ideas and information, specific to your objectives.
Kindergarten and 1st Grade
Ocean Life - Kindergarten students delight to make their own sting ray hand puppets and "aquarium" in which they can create a sting ray petting station complete with musical accompaniment, such as Saint Saens Le Carnaval des Animaux'.
Story telling and creative thinking - Students play theater games and practice sound effects, expression of feelings and ideas.
Of course, theater games can be implemented by any grade level with age appropriate choices.
2nd - 3th Grade
Insects - "Real" and fanciful designed insects, with the correct anatomy and actual movable parts are assembled and creep around the room.
Where Wild Things Are - Are you interested in a school performance with literary integration? Each class, in a chosen grade level, adopts a Wild Thing and builds him/her larger than life! Theatrical skills, song, and dramatic reading are incorporated bring the entire grade to the stage in a performance sure to delight parents and all audience members.
Character Building and Writing Skills - Students and teacher brainstorm as a class to create stories with a lesson, such as reinforcing appropriate methods for dealing with bullies. Scenery and puppets are built to act out stories.
3rd - 5th grade
SC History - Students bring history to life as they create historical figure puppets, then they work in groups to write and perform short skits for each other. They will remember these historical men and woman forever!
Language Arts - Creative writing, paragraph structure, and poetry can all be integrated into a puppetry workshop. Through Puppets and Poetry, students use simple mouth puppets and hand movement to learn alliteration, haiku, and other poetry forms. Motivation for creative writing is heightened when students are planning a play! Think Peter Pan for paragraph structure. "Hook" gives us the first line, supporting characters each improvise supporting sentences, while Peter Pan offers a conclusion.
Cultural studies - Vietnamese Water Puppets, Japanese Bunraku, Indonesian Shadow, Chinese Lion Dance, European Marionettes and Punch and Judy style hand puppets, can be used to teach world culture. How do ideas and tradition compare to our own? How can we be enriched by learning about other cultures?
Middle School
Greek Mythology - Imagine filling your classroom with recreations of Medusa, Pegasus, and Icarus, or any other figure your students choose to research and present!
Alice in Wonderland - For a literary performance idea, Lewis Carroll's fanciful characters are designed to perform along with a real human student playing Alice. Do your students play in the band? They can create their own sound effects and musical accompaniment for the performance. Your students fill all the roles on stage and behind the scenes to learn how to put on a play.
High School
Visual Arts - High school students design and build original artistic pieces of their own choosing, from intricate Indonesian shadow puppets to mechanical figures which may be either displayed gallery style or used in performance for younger groups.
Theater - Scenes and stories from the great playwrights (such as Shakespeare), literary works (such as Wu Cheng'en's Journey to the West), or your students' own original writings are built and performed, using a wide variety of puppetry methods, techniques, and styles.
These are only a few workshop themes which have proved highly successful in my classroom visits, both academically and artistically. There really is no end to what can be done in your classroom with puppetry. Your students will look forward to coming to class every day! Please contact me for ideas for specific standards you would like to teach with puppetry, or objectives you would like to reach.
