How to introduce puppets in the classroom

Viviana Rogozinski, Argentine puppeteer, in her excellent book Puppets in

School - Expression, Play and Communication, shows us the different
stages necessary to start working with puppets in the classroom.
1 Playing with puppets or exploratory games.
In this first stage the child (and also the adult) becomes familiar with the
characteristics of the puppet material. Its texture, weight, color and play
freely with it, alone or with colleagues. It is intended to feel the puppet
sensory, but with a subjective gaze that activates the child's creativity,
investigating its possibilities.
The ideal would be to allow the children total freedom to play with the
puppets. In case of lack of initiative, this activity can be guided by
suggestions from the teacher with music, sound effects or aromas.
2 Gesture language of the glove puppet
At this stage, I will boldly depart from the recommendation of Viviana
Rogozinski's text following my personal experience.
Between 2 to 6/7 years of age, according to Piaget, children are egocentric,
from 2 to 4 they already have pre-logical, symbolic thinking and from 4 to
6/7 the intuition begins. It is the age when animism predominates in his
games, spontaneously giving life to his toys, in particular, the puppets.
For these ages, the reader will find material in chapter II of the blog.
Between 7/8 and 12/14 years, children begin to use logical thinking,
socialize, communicate autonomously and accept rules.
This is the time to teach them the language of the glove puppet with which
they can express their emotions and feelings.
Finger, fist and forearm movements are described in Chapter I of the blog.
3 Improvisations
In the third stage the children in groups create a short story with actions
mediated by a conflict. It is very common for children to fight through the
puppets, giving them blows, socks and beating with improvised clubs.
In this case, the teacher will guide them to use creativity in their fights:
Give the blows in slow motion
The club is very heavy
The club has a life of its own and decides to caress instead of hitting.
Thus, the child seeks other ways of expressing himself through the puppet.
4 Representation
At this stage it is important to gather the group in a circle and for each one
to tell about an experience that could be the subject of the script of the play,
as in the case of this blog it was a real case of bullying. In this way the
children will interpret the characters with the puppets with greater
credibility.
As we want to teach Ethics, values such as respect, solidarity,
responsibility, honesty, tolerance can be worked on.
When writing the script, it is important to avoid scripts with moral
messages. The values should be shown by the feelings and attitudes of the
characters, giving the children´s audience the freedom to draw their own
conclusions about them.
Like any play, the script must have a sequence of actions in which we will
have an introduction of the characters, a conflict between them and a final
solution.

As the best puppet theater has little dialogue and a lot of action, it is
important to find opportunities for action scenes, as is the case
of the fight in our first bullying show.
It is important to note that the value of this activity lies in the process, in
which children develop their creativity, building puppets, sceneries, sound
tracks and props, socializing, collaborating to solve challenges,
respecting the opinions of their colleagues and learning to obey the
director. Therefore, it is not essential to mount a complete play. Several
short scenes will give the opportunity to practice the basic elements of
Puppet Theater and also have fun, one of the objectives of this theater that
makes the child come to school with enthusiasm and at the same time be
stimulated to study and improve their school performance.
Rogozinski, Viviana, PUPPETS In SCHOOL - EXPRESSION, PLAY and
COMMUNICATION, Ediciones Novedades Educativas, Buenos Aires,
Mexico, 2005
Contacts and purchase of books: vivirogo@yahoo.com.ar,
www.vivirogo.com.ar cel: 0541161945466