Simple Stick Puppets

Simple Stick Puppets

ARTS 130

Professor J. Healy

Time Period: 1-2 Periods

Aims:

•To create original puppet characters

•To use puppets in student-produced puppet show

Materials: Bristol board or oak tag pieces/scraps, art materials of your choice that work on paper, scissors, tape, popsicle sticks, tongue depressors, short kebob skewers

or stubby pencils.

Motivation: There are many ways to approach this lesson with children. If you have a few puppets already made, you could start the lesson with a puppet show about making puppets. Kids adore it when you make different voices for the characters. Or you could talk a bit about how plays are written and have your students write playlets (either in groups or individually) of their own. The important thing is to have at least two characters that can interact.

Teach your students how to make a beginning, middle and end to their plays and have them keep it short. (Kids’ plays can go on forever. A little editing here will be a good thing.) In any case, the students should know ahead of time what character or characters they are making.

Vocabulary to use: character, dialogue, villain, hero/heroine, shape, three-quarter view, frontal view

Procedure: Gather your students around a large table, making sure that everyone can see. I have everyone take a step backwards to make the oval big enough so no one is blocked. (If kids lean forward, people behind him are blocked.)

Discuss the importance of shape and show students how to make a frontal or side view of their characters. After drawing in the details, the flat pieces should be colored. You may want to use the old standby of sharpie followed by watercolor. At the end, gluing on feathers, glitter, eyeballs, etc. is also an option. Use Elmer’s Glue’all—not School Glue or a glue stick.

The last step is to cut out the character and tape it on a stick for use.

Reflection: Follow-up: Make a puppet theater out of a large appliance box for students to use in the classroom. Add a real curtain.