Creative Teaching: Puppets & Puppetry

by Megan Mora Fuentes

The freedom to explore creative teaching and learning methods is one of the great benefits of homeschooling. This Homeschool Living explores ways in which you can incorporate puppets and puppetry into creative learning in your homeschool, both by using puppets in creative teaching and by using puppets themselves as the subject of a unit study. Check out these fun ways to change your teaching with puppets, the myriad different types of puppets at your disposal, and dozens of ways for you and your kids to create your own puppets to use in your creative homeschool.

This blog post from Big World of Little Dude shares several ways that puppets can be used in creative teaching to strengthen communication and language skills in students, encourage reluctant learners, and provide a creative outlet.

Creative Puppet Power

These six ways puppets will change your classroom include tips for using puppets to bolster confidence, engineering and design skills, and problem solving by having students construct their own puppets for a wide variety of classroom applications.

When you think of puppets, you probably have a specific type of puppet in mind–the classic marionette, for example, or a sock puppet á la Lamb Chop. But did you know that there are dozens of types of puppets out there–from the simplest stick puppets to elaborate Bunraku puppets requiring up to three people to operate? This list from Twinkl shares descriptions and history facts for a wide variety of puppets, as well as suggestions for their different uses in a creative teaching environment.

While there are tons of ways that you can incorporate puppets into your creative teaching methods, actually designing and creating the puppets is probably the most fun–for you and for your students! Check out these 28 kids puppets–all of which you can make without extensive crafting knowledge or special tools and supplies. Many of them can even be made with bits and pieces you already have around your house, so you don’t even have to wait to be able to bring your homeschooling to life.

If you’re interested in even more ways to incorporate dramatic, creative teaching methods into your homeschool, check out this Homeschool Living post: Teaching With Drama.