Puppet Show Wed 11/12/14

Well, the kids had a long 7 hour day at the babysitters today.  It was a really hard day for me.  I usually get to at least come home for two hours with them at lunch and enjoy some game playing during lunch or some reading time on the couch after lunch.  However, today I had a rehearsal at BYU after I got off work at UVU.  So, I came home in full force to create and spend time with the kids.

Madalynn wanted to a puppet show when we got home.  So I sat down on the recliner to watch. These pictures are her show earlier.  Oh, how I love our theater.

I remembered that I wanted to look up some tutorials about how to make a stuff animal into a puppet.  We have like 50 stuffed animals that the kids never touch.  Well I found this tutorial and it is on the list of things to do this next week.  (Here is a second Tutorial. I won't be doing this one, but I liked it a lot.)  Madalynn sat in my lap and watched the youtube videos I found.  We talked about making the puppets and which animals we would do.

Then I asked her what new puppets she wanted to make today.  We googled chickens and she picked out a bunch of pictures to use.  She wanted to show the life of a chicken from egg, birth, to adult.  It was creative.  As I was watching her cut out her chickens today, I was noticing just how much more meticulous she is with her cuts.  All of a sudden in the past week she is seriously attempting to stay in lines with her coloring.  She is taking her time to cut really close to the edge of the picture and not cut into it.  It is amazing to me how well her small motor skills are working.  That doesn't mean she didn't cut off some parts, but I repaired them with tape and we went on.  I love her concentration face.

 Two years ago I bought some puppet kits from Hobby Lobby to make Madalynn some puppets for Christmas.  I got the pieces glued on before I realized that I should have sewed the felt first.  I couldn't use my machine without gumming it up.  I pulled them out tonight.  I tried unsucessfully to sew them with my machine again.  Russ got out the needle and thread and tried to sew them too.  Eventually we decided to just hot glue them.  They were super cheap and I don't care if the kids destroy them.  I just don't want to loose small pieces around the house.  We will see what happens.  I let Remington watch me while I was using the hot glue gun.  I let Madalynn hold the heat gun to help me glue. It was certainly a family affair.

We did do a puppet show before bed tonight.  Russ was doing dishes while listening so we didn't get any pictures, but it was fun.  I am thinking that we are going to do pictures of the the Little Red Hen story tomorrow night.   That is a fun story that Madalynn will be able to repeat without any problems.

Hope you enjoyed.