Puppets help keep a young child focused on an acitivity such as storytime.
Much of a young child's world involves pretending and the life of the imagination. Dress up, "playing house," games of cops and robbers, and storytelling are all creative activities that could be termed the "work" of childhood. Puppets speak to this imaginative, "let's pretend" aspect of young children and can be enjoyed for their creative, therapeutic and educational benefits.
Dramatic Expression with Puppets
Young children can enjoy a puppet show, either by participating as the audience or by rehearsing and performing their own. Fairy tales, religious stories and silly tales of talking animals or magical events can all be staged using puppets. For the youngest children who will act as puppeteers, use the simplest puppets. Youngsters can manage puppets that are simply a representation of the character on a stick, with no moving parts. Puppets that are manipulated by hand movements will also work for younger children -- sock puppets and finger puppets are good examples of this type.
Making Puppets
Children can engage their artistic side by creating their own puppets. You can use nearly anything to create a puppet -- old socks, paper plates, tennis balls, poster board, Styrofoam balls, plastic silverware or juice cans, for example. The list of potential puppet-making materials will be as long as your own imagination. Have the children develop an idea for a puppet play and then gather materials for them to create the puppets with which to perform it. Both the Disney Family Fun website and A to Z Home's Cool Homeschooling provide links to a variety of puppet-making projects.
Psychological Benefits of Puppets
Puppets, while they are manipulated by human beings, can appear to young children to be magical, special beings straight out of the world of imagination. This non-threatening quality can create a feeling of ease and freedom between child and puppet, and children who are very shy often open up in conversation with a puppet. Puppets can talk with children about questions or issues that come up in everyday life, since the children trust and feel safe with them. Puppets that enact being made fun of by peers or how it feels to try hard but not be able to accomplish a task can help a child experiencing a similar circumstance to open up.
Educational Benefits of Puppets
Pre-K, kindergarten and lower grade school teachers can use puppets as "assistants" in the classroom. According to Amy Wallace and Larisa Mishina in their 2004 thesis study "Relations between the Use of Puppetry in the Classroom, Student Attention and Student Involvement," young students pay much closer attention to information when it is delivered by a teacher acting as a puppeteer. Young children respond to the role playing and humor that are exhibited when puppets (through the teachers) are allowed to "teach" the class. Wallace and Mishina also found the same correlation to exist when the students took the role of puppeteer, offering their knowledge and questions on classroom subject matter through puppets.
