“When children pretend, they’re using their imaginations to move beyond the bounds of reality. A stick can be a magic wand. A sock can be a puppet. A small child can be a superhero.”
Fred Rogers

Puppets have the power to completely change your classroom! They create an endless amount of opportunities for creativity, collaboration, critical thinking skills, and encourage curiosity in all age groups.

When I wrote Educate the Heart, which has 180 screen-free activities that make the social and emotional learning needs of students a priority, and ensures that all children are taught to think critically, collaborate effectively, communicate respectfully, and express themselves creatively, I discussed puppetry as a strategy for empowering students to handle conflict.

This activity from my book is called: Imagination Changes Everything

Children should be encouraged to use their imagination to help them adjust to new situations, express their feelings, and work through difficult challenges. Puppets allow students to have fun and practice their new communication skills and new ways of responding to conflict before they actually have to put it in practice. It’s easy for teachers to set up a puppet theater without any special equipment. I was fortunate to be funded for a commercially made theater through DonorsChoose recently, but a tablecloth over a table can create a theatrical atmosphere, encouraging creativity and freedom of expression.

Puppets are easy to make with popsicle sticks and any type of craft scraps or materials teachers happen to have. Construction paper, felt, tissue paper, yarn, moveable eyes, glitter, sequins, and buttons all work well with regular school glue. Students can make puppets to represent themselves, fictional characters, or any creatures they imagine. It would be great for students to have time to use the puppets as a center activity and be encouraged to use them to resolve actual conflicts that happen during the day. Many teachers also use the puppets during whole group time and pretend a puppet has a problem he or she needs help with. Kids love coming up with peaceful ideas to “help” the puppet resolve the conflict.

Puppets can be a wonderful way to encourage risk-taking in opinion or narrative writing. Writing creative dialogue for a puppet that they have created allows them to be far more silly, as well as take risks with accents, characters, and plots that they wouldn't try if they were required to act it out live.

Puppets can also be used as ‘reporters’ sharing information about content they have researched or studied. Not only does it help them learn the content as well as writing skills and dialogue formatting, but they also learn important lessons in collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and creativity when they do this with a partner or small group.

History can be brought to life with puppets created to look like former Presidents, explorers, and other men, women, and children who have made important contributions to the world.

Science topics and concepts would be so much more fun explained and practiced with special puppets that somehow relate to the subject.

Having students teach the class as a puppet, such a chef explaining healthy food choices, is a great use of these charming toys.

Practicing vocabulary words, debating different topics, and even discussing various math strategies will come to life and capture students attention when you use puppets that you create or purchase.

The creation of a puppet by a child is a wonderful way to encourage a growth mindset and design thinking because students will be encouraged to use their imagination and will learn from their mistakes without worrying about being, ‘wrong.’ It will take different attempts to make what they imagine in their mind and have to try different ways to make it operational.

My students often visit our consumable maker space area and amaze me with the different inventions they come up with, from cars for teddy bears to special cases for their rock collections.

Now that we have a puppet theater that we plan on using regularly, I’ve added materials such as socks, paper bags, paper plates, and movable eyes. I’m looking forward to seeing the creativity unfold!

Check out this article from Handmade Charlotte for super fun ideas for creating sock puppets! It has definitely inspired me to create and I also found a cool kit at a great price here.

This is another great and easy kit that will allow children to be creative and make different types of puppets of their own. It’s also a great gift idea!

If you would like to invest in great quality puppets I definitely recommend the storytelling sets from Lakeshore Learning. I have had mine for more than two years (another DonorsChoose project) and they are still in beautiful condition.

How have you created or utilized puppets in the classroom? I would love to hear about your experiences and ideas. Please feel free to leave me a comment or email to share your ideas and connect further.

Thank you so much for your time and attention. I hope you found this post worthwhile.

Yours truly,

Jennifer