Wednesday, November 5, 2014

Puppet show Wednesdays

Madalynn loves to create things.  When she is creating, she is the calmest, most concentrated, easiest person to be around.  It is good to learnt his about your child.  Too bad I can't figure out how to make all the things we do everyday seem like creating to her.

She has always loved make believe and acting things out.  When we made her loft bed....a castle bed, there were two windows.  One day I thought it would be fun to act out a story using some of the craft supplies I had.  At one point I needed to buy some popsicle sticks and when I looked at the price of buying a box of 50 vs. the box of 1000....I decided on the larger box.  It was seriously only $1 more expensive.  So I printed out a picture story of Goldilocks and the 3 Bears.  She colored it and cut it out with Russ while I was at work that morning.  I came home and helped her tape on sticks.  We did the story in her room that night.  It was a HIT!!!  She was asking for days to do another one.  Everytime she would draw things, she would ask for scissors and cut her drawings out to make them puppets.  Here is our current box of homemade, popsicle stick puppets.

Well, randomly a few weeks later, my Father-in-law came for a visit. We went to Logan, ut with him to pick up a tractor he bought.  It was fun.  All of a sudden one day while I was doing some learning things with Madalynn, he said, "I have been meaning to ask for a while, but Grandpa Simper wants to know if you guys would like the puppet theater."  I had never heard of this theater and had no idea what it was or how big it was.  I just knew that if Randy made something it was incredibly professional.  Well.....here is a picture the night we got it.  Seriously, I jumped up and down like a kid at Christmas.  I was so excited.  Right now it has 6 back drops.  I am hoping to make a fun jungle and hawaiian one before Christmas.

So we brought it home, with a lot of fun puppets as well.  There are some puppets that are special for just playing with mom.  There are animal puppets they can play with any day.  There are popsicle puppets.  I am making sock puppets.  This week she made paper bag puppets.  Santa brought Madalynn a ton of finger puppets when she was 2 yrs old and we are still trying to collect them from all over the house.  When you are 4 1/2 yrs old, anything will do.  It has been the best thing to happen to our house and dealing with my daughters creativity.  She is constantly thinking up stories for a show.  She is always asking to make new popsicle stick puppets.  I am glad we got this at a stage where creativity.  The following pictures are pictures of the boxes of puppets/minus the stick puppets up above.  The animals and the special people.  One of the most special puppets is the last picture.  My mother in law had that puppet in her hope chest from her grandma.  Heirlooms are irreplaceable.  I am so glad she kept it.

The next project at hand (once I finish my current work project of publishing a ballet music score book) is to take the stuffed animals in Remingtons closet and make them into hand puppets.  My kids are not stuff animals people but we have tons and tons of them.  Most of them are special from people so I haven't thrown them away.  I am so glad to find a way to shrink them down and still be able to keep them in a way that the kids will play with them.  As she does a few shows I will post the videos here.  Here is a link to a small portion of the first puppet show she ever did.

There will be much more on this subject as I finish up projects and she does more shows.  I can't wait to finish a new show and ask our neighbor to come over to watch.  She is excited about an audience.

I have been adding puppet ideas to my pinterest board puppet acts for the past month.  If you are interested, check it out.

Hope you enjoy!!


No comments:

Post a Comment