November 18th "Puppet Palooza"

We are going to be doing a unit on School Faculty and their roles in the schools--we are doing this in conjunction with puppets. Our first lesson in the unit was making the puppets which took the whole class period, but this allowed for students to have ownership of their puppets. One thing I loved about this project was how the students wanted to go above and beyond for their puppets. They did things I hadn't even thought about doing which was awesome. I am glad we choose to create our own puppets instead of using ones I have made because it made them think creatively in a way that we haven't done before in our drama lessons.

Below is the lesson plan and some pictures of the students puppets.

Introduce Puppets

Introduce my puppet to the students. Ask students where else they have seen puppets before. Have them pair share and then have a couple of students share with the class. Explain to students that puppets are used in theatre to create a character that that can be used by the actor. Puppets also allow us to make characters that look very different from ourselves.

School Faculty Puppets

Explain to students that my puppet is a teacher. Ask what other jobs are needed to run a school. List them on the board.

Examples: Principals, Vice Principals, Cafeteria Workers, Custodians, Playground Aids, Librarians, Nurses, etc. Tell students that they will be making their puppet to be one of these jobs. Hand out index cards that have the jobs they listed written on them. Have students choose an index one at a time.

Making of the Puppets

 

Then we will begin to make the puppets. Hand out a brown lunch sack to each student and have glue, markers, construction paper, ribbon, yarn, and scissors pulled out. Explain to students that the first step is going to be to create the mouth. The need to pick one piece of paper and then trace the rectangle template onto that piece of paper and cut it out. Once it is cut out you will glue it on the flat part of the brown paper bag. Model the template and where to glue it. Wait for everyone to get to that point. Next we are going to make the tongue again have them trace this time the heart template onto a different color of construction paper and cut it out. This is then glued in the mouth. Model the template and where to glue it. After you are done you can draw the nose on or you can cut out a piece of paper into a square, heart, triangle, or circle and glue it on. After you have glued the tongue and have either drawn or glued on a nose raise your hand. As students raise their hands have them decide whether they want googly eyes or they want to draw them on. If they want googly eyes an adult will hot glue them. When students finish with the eyes have them work on the hair this can be drawn, cut out, or with yarn/ribbon. Again if anything needs to be hot glued have them raise their hands. After the hair have them work on the clothes these can be drawn or cut out and glued. After puppets are made have them help clean up.