Puppets are manipulatives for literacy. The puppetry arts authentically encompass physical, vocal and visual expression. Through puppet making and play kids discover the storytelling tools of design, movement, sound, music & speech. Explore how the variety of expressive tools used in puppetry can help kids to learn, generate, develop and share stories.
Physical and vocal expression activities give kids the chance to make concrete personal connections to new vocabulary and concepts. When done in unison, these activities also facilitate peer to peer teaching and learning, by allowing children to share more of what they know physically and non-verbally.
Notice the choices that students make across expressive media. Describe their choices with enthusiasm using specific, nonjudgemental language. Ask kids about their process and work.
Students experiment, problem-solve, and communicate about their ideas and experiences. Multisensory expression builds on the capacity students already have to communicate using bodies, voices, classroom space and play. Without the obstacle of finding a word for everything, students express complex thoughts. This builds a “fun” scaffold to verbal expression.
Kids live in a multisensory world, and they have been learning through their sensory experience since they were very small. When they engage in multisensory expression they access all of their intelligences, and can express rich and complex perceptions in a more nuanced way than through words alone.
In this video, kindergarten teacher Kathy Anderson describes how her students build their literacy skills with autonomy and joy through artmaking and puppet play.
Watch how active vocabulary is created through multisensory expression! Children took a 5 Senses Journey to a farm and its apple orchard and learned new vocabulary. They made settings and puppets inspired by their visit. Our documentarian captured a student in the midst of her puppet play, searching her memory for the word “orchard”- and finding it.
These young New Yorkers learned about the unfamiliar farm setting in Charlotte’s Web physically through a 5-senses Journey and collaging setting backdrops. They embodied characters in Quick Poses before drawing puppets. In this video, they explore puppet movement, retell through play in small groups, share with their class, and get feedback from their peers.
In this video, 1st graders explore advanced emotion vocabulary that they have learned while studying Mean Jean The Recess Queen.
Then they create statues to show a variety of characters expressing various surprising emotions. Finally they draw & describe their own expressive characters. Classroom teacher Jean Antoldi used this as a pre-sequence for c
We discussed and charted how both of these characters’ feelings changed throughout the stories. We acted the emotions out with our faces and bodies. Students then selected a specific character and showed two different emotions. We discussed how the shapes, space and directions change the emotions. This was their interpretation. Bibi Zabar, PS 62Q, 1st gra
In this example, kids repeat the phrase “Look! It started to snow!” to express a variety of emotion vocabulary. They do it with their bodies and then with their puppets, preparing them to use expressive voices in puppet play. Choose any simple repeated phrase that connects to your students’ interests and will inspire their story making through puppet play
“Students were tasked with creating a puppet of an animal with special adaptations that allow it to survive, and a collage of animal’s habitat. On the last day, students put on a puppet show where they invited another puppet friend to learn more about their adaptations. It was wonderful to see students independent”- Jessica Giler, PS 62Q, 1st grade