The Puppet Lady

Monday, January 23

Today, I am looking back a little bit earlier in the year. For this "look back" I want to talk about our experience with the Puppet Lady.

From October through December (2 times a week for 30 minutes) my students got the honor of having the Puppet Lady come to our school. Since our school is a Fine Arts Magnet, we get to do fun activities. One of the highlights is having an artist come to the classroom for a residency. This year, we had the Puppet Lady, Ellen Shultz, come to our classroom. To say my students loved her is an understatement. 

This picture shows the variety of puppets we made first. We got to make hand puppets, so the students could have something to take home. We learned from a few years ago, that they are more willing to let us keep puppets at school longer if they could take one home first. This puppet took us about 2 weeks to make. Each day, we added something new: the eyes, nose, ears and tongue were added. Then we practiced how to make our puppets "talk." 

I also used these puppets for a writing assignment for my higher students. Although I didn't take pictures, they had to describe their puppets in writing!

These are pictures of Ellen showing us the different steps of how to make our adapted marionette puppets that we eventually used for the show. We had to choose the head, mouth shape, cut out the foam for the face, choose the color of our puppet, put in the arms and hands, and choose the hair pieces. You can see our final puppets below!

Aren't we a cute set of puppets!

At the end of making our puppets, we put on a show for our parents and other students at the school! The students had so much fun...and although she has been gone, they are still asking for the Puppet Lady to come and visit! 

Tomorrow, I will talk about our Holiday Party....what fun we had before we went on vacation for almost 3 weeks!  =)

Until next time...