Stuffed Animal Puppetry, Unique Fun for Kids!
Stuffed animals make perfect puppets! They have a softness about them that makes the puppet touchable, even huggable. They are readily available in the home of any toddler. And they’re much less expensive than “real” puppets. They only thing holding you back is your inhibitions about story-making, imaginative play, and “working” the puppets. Your child, if he is anything like my grandson, will soon be after you night and day to play puppets. He can’t get enough of them. Today we were running late, and didn’t have time for it.But he took it in stride, especially when I told him we’d have a long session when he gets home from pre-school. This is the first morning in weeks that we haven’t played “Monkey-Wonkey-Moo” which is what he calls the play time. He didn’t seem to mind, but he’ll put up a stink if I don’t play it tonight! Yes he will! And he’d be justified, because I’ve entered this magic world with him where his stuffed animals have come alive. They move, they talk, they do everything a living money or Skunk does! Yes, we have a Skunk! His Name? Skunky-Wonkey-Scoo. I tried to make the names a bit difficult to pronounce, because my grandson is language delayed and has a difficult time pronouncing his words correctly.
Stuffed animal puppets have worked wonders in my grandson’s overcoming his shyness, his speech production, and to a degree his pronunciation. Yesterday saw several firsts for him. There was a little girl at a restaurant who looked at my grandson first, pressing her hace against a glass divider of the booths. He covered his face with one arm, then, suddenly, took his arm away and looked right at her! I believe that his interaction with the puppets has a lot to do with his coming out of his shell. He’s by no means a socialite yet, however he’s taken the first step.
At school, the teacher’s one criticism of him was that he didn’t understand the dynamics of group play. Well, yesterday, in our afternoon session, didn’t he go and initiate a game of tag with the puppets?!? Where did that come from? I really don’t know. The key now is to build on that, make rules for the game, and build up a protocol for playing “tag” that’s socially acceptable.
If you view this site, realize that it’s in it’s infancy! It’s barely a day old. But I will be putting up content as the days go by, beginning back in time when we first started. It will be a story of our exploration of stuffed animal puppetry, and my grandson’s and mine’s successes and failures with it. So return from time to time. The domain name is stuffedanimalpuppetry.com My email address is slhmg@aol.com I’d love to hear any feedback you have on the site and ways of improving it or questions you might have. Thanks! Steve Hall
