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Home › Education › Fundamentals of Play › Puppets, Felt & Magnetic Brds

Educational Value of Play - Puppets, Felt & Magnetic Boards

Fundamentals of Play

Puppets, Felt and Magnetic Boards

Puppets are fantastic props to inspire children to create, tell and re-tell stories, by encouraging them to express feelings, explore their creativity, engage in role play and act out fantasy situations.

Physical

finger puppets Learning to manipulate a variety of different puppets is ideal to develop that fine motor control in an exciting way. Similarly moving felt or magnetic shapes around forces children to use fine control to place the figures accurately. Making their own puppets is invaluable also, forcing them to use scissors to cut out shapes and placing bits accurately to form their faces, hair clothing etc.

Language/Social Development

puppets With puppets, children tend to be more spontaneous and vocally expressive with their telling and retelling of stories. Furthermore by providing opportunities to creatively puppets help in the development and improvement of children’s language skills by providing opportunities to creatively and dramatically use language in a variety of ways. Puppets can encourage shy children to speak as it is not them that is speaking - it is the puppet.

Puppets are valuable to use with familiar stories. They are also very valuable in the creation of new scenarios, and are a non obtrusive way of dealing with emotions.
Using the corresponding puppet / felt characters and incorporating them with the story book assists in the animation of the story by making the characters come alive. This contributes to children's appreciation of books which is very important to stimulate early reading concepts.

Children with learning difficulties and/or emotional problems can vastly benefit from the use of puppets. Often they can 'act' out their feelings through the puppets in a way they are too inhibited or frightened to do through ordinary conversation.

Mathematical Concepts

"Many of the activities which children really enjoy, at first glance appear to have little, if any, connection with the learning of mathematical ideas or skills. Many of the rhymes, songs and stories which are traditionally a part of a child's daily routine may provide useful practice of counting skills or may introduce and/or reinforce a variety of mathematical ideas."

There are many ways in which you can enhance your child's enjoyment of rhymes songs and stories. Felt boards or magnetic boards or the door of the fridge, together with characters made from felt or from card or paper with either velcro claws or small pieces of magnetic tape attached, can be used to help sequence events from a story. Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar lends itself to many activities related to counting if the items the caterpillar eats each day are drawn onto card, cut out, magnetic tape attached and placed on the fridge! They can be used to answer questions based on the story or to solve "What if....". Pictures from Rosie's Walk, a Pat Hutchins favourite, can be sequenced and can also be used to illustrate the various spatial positions Rosie moves through as she goes for her walk.

When puppets are constructed from paper/plastic plates and scraps of material or paper, your child is able to explore the idea of symmetry, position and balance. If the masks are used with a song such as Old McDonald had a farm, they can be used to help your child remember the sequence of the animals as they appear in the song."
by Fran Ciupryk - with thanks from itz4kidz

Help Them To Make Their Own!

Making puppets with your children can be a fun and innovative experience to share. Popsticks and cardboard make easy finger puppets. Children can make a character from cardboard and glue it to a popstick which they hold. Alternatively, use the popstick as the character by making a face and adding hair. Wooden spoons make great puppets also. Paint a face on the spoon, and just add hair and clothes (get out those collage materials!!!) Similarly dish mops are great - the hair is already there!!!!!! Frogs and monkeys and other animals can be cut from plastic plates and attached to sticks for mathematical rhymes like 5 little monkeys jumping on the bed and 5 speckled frogs sitting on a log (see nursery rhymes). Sock puppets are easy too. Puppets can be made from paper bags or cereal boxes. A white cottor or old gloves also make the foundation of great finger puppets. Attach novelty bees (from craft shops such as scrapbooking shops, Lincraft, Spotlight) to the top of each finger of the glove to act out the rhyme - Here is a beehive. Add duck shapes for rhyme 5 little ducks went out one day, frog shapes (little wooden ones available from craft stores already mentioned) for 5 speckled frogs, or monkey shapes for 5 monkeys jumping on the bed. Look through our Nursery Rhymes for other songs children could use puppets to act out.