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.

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!!