{"id":630,"date":"2009-12-08T08:54:25","date_gmt":"2009-12-08T12:54:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/?p=630"},"modified":"2010-12-10T17:13:06","modified_gmt":"2010-12-10T21:13:06","slug":"puppets-at-storytime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/puppets-at-storytime\/","title":{"rendered":"Puppets at storytime"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anyone who knows my family knows that we have an odd affinity with puppets, and anyone who knows that wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to learn that I accumulated dozens of Folkmanis puppets in my tenure as manager\u00a0of the Toy Shop<\/a>.\u00a0 (I even got to meet one of the Folkmanis puppet designers one day when he came to shop in the store, and I got all googily-eyed and star-struck and almost <\/em>got up the guts to ask him to sign a couple of puppets for me.\u00a0 Almost.\u00a0 I still regret not asking him.)<\/p>\n

But there’s a distance to travel from loving puppets\u00a0to successfully integrating puppets into storytimes.\u00a0 I’ve been working hard at using puppets in my storytimes, and have learned that I have to forget that I’m a self-conscious semi-middle-aged woman who has her hand up the hiney of a stuffed animal* in front of a crowd of adults and children.\u00a0 The magic is hopelessly lost the minute I start thinking, “Geez, these parents must think I’m some kind of whacko.”\u00a0 Conversely, the magic is created when I kick aside my pride and have fun with the puppet.\u00a0 I’ve even seen some adults get sucked into the moment, giggling along with their kids when the monkey puppets clap enthusiastically for the crowd at the conclusion of “Two Little Monkeys” in the infant storytime.\u00a0 And I’ve seen grown-ups react like their children when the cat puppet purrs or the dog puppet barks and pants or the lion puppet roars.<\/p>\n

Once I figured out how to use puppets in an adjunct way at storytimes – to introduce the theme of the week, or to supplement a finger play or song – then I started to tackle the issue of how to tell a memorized story with the help of puppets to preschoolers.\u00a0 I\u00a0began by using Margaret Read MacDonald’s Twenty Tellable Tales<\/em>\u00a0<\/a>as my primary resource.\u00a0 MacDonald has a lot of great stories here, and I’ve sucessfully told many of them, but I also struggle with combining the memorization with the puppet presentation.\u00a0 Some weeks I’ve allowed myself to get nervous about getting the words exactly right, and then the whole story falls completely flat.\u00a0 And then there are weeks\u00a0when I just don’t have the time available to memorize\u00a0a story, and I try to tell it from photocopied sheets laid on the table next to me.\u00a0 Once again, hard to integrate the puppet presentation with reading my cheat sheet; at times the kids have become distracted by my reading and the magic, of course, is lost.<\/p>\n

So I’ve tried something different the last two times I’ve done puppet stories at the preschool storytime: I’ve chosen simple picture books that feature animal characters for which I have matching puppets.\u00a0 I don’t try to memorize the story, but rather I lay the picturebook flat on my lap (if the story can be told completely with the puppets) or I hold the picturebook up with my left hand and use my right hand for puppeteering (if the story needs the pictures and the puppets to be told).\u00a0 This approach has worked better for me, and gotten a much better response from the audience.\u00a0 The reason it works better?\u00a0 I think it has to do with the stories, since I usually choose newer picturebooks that feature stories that are contemporary, not traditional.\u00a0 Much as I love MacDonald’s book, some of her stories have that traditional folkloric edge that doesn’t sit well with today’s parents.\u00a0 Today’s parents don’t like the scary or faintly macabre, and I know that, and get nervous when I use a tale that has those elements.\u00a0 And today’s kids aren’t used to that type of story, and don’t respond as well to the traditional structure as they do to a newly published picturebook that is written in the style with which they are most familiar.<\/p>\n

I’m still working out how best to use puppets in my storytimes, and how often to use them.\u00a0 I’d love to hear from any of you who do use puppets – what works, what doesn’t, what’s awesome, what’s terrible.\u00a0 Please share!!<\/p>\n

*One of my best friends in college, Collin, used to make fun of my puppet usage by saying, “Ewwww!\u00a0 That’s gross!!!!\u00a0 You have your hand up\u00a0the bear’s\u00a0butt!!!!!\u00a0 EWWWWWW!!!”\u00a0 Collin’s words tend to echo in my head at storytime if I don’t block them out…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anyone who knows my family knows that we have an odd affinity with puppets, and anyone who knows that wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to learn that I accumulated dozens of Folkmanis puppets in my tenure as manager\u00a0of the Toy Shop.\u00a0 (I even got to meet one of the Folkmanis puppet designers one day … Continue reading Puppets at storytime<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-storytime"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=630"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":863,"href":"https:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630\/revisions\/863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}