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22
03
2010
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Putting on a puppet play |
One idea for a creative, cheap and cheerful way to spend time with your children is to put on a puppet show in your own home. At the Bethnal Green Museum of Modern Childhood there is an old fashioned style puppet booth where young museum visitors were encouraged to pick up the puppets and put on a play. I was surprised and pleased to see that even in an era of DVDs and computer games, they loved it. To put on your own family puppet show all you need are some old (clean!) socks and some buttons which can be sewn or stuck on to create eyes. Alternatively a paper plate can be folded in two, and then all you need is a felt tip to draw on eyes and a small strip of red paper to put in to the fold of the plate to create a tongue. There you have it - a scary monster, or a snake perhaps? Children can really relish a game like this with all of its different elements. They can have fun writing the play, or maybe basing it on their favourite story or television characters. Then there can be the fun of making posters to advertise the “play”to be put up over the house, programmes they can write to hand out to the luck/unlucky (delete as applicable!) parents or carers, and think of the potential of making pop corn with your children for the audience members to eat while they watch the performance. On a rainy day it can be really absorbing and thoroughly good fun for children to engage in an activity such as this, and it can be a lovely way for you to spend time with and play with your children in a creative and practical way.