Puppet Co-op

Today, I had my puppet co-op that I had organized.  When I was working on my co-ops, the kids said they wanted to learn more about puppets so I found a man that would do a class for us.  We had seen him before at other shows.  Mark Hellerstein taught the kids about different types of puppets - shadow, string (marionette), hard, soft and rod.  He also discussed creating a character and a voice to go with your character and how to tell a story with a puppet.

The kids were rolling in the aisles when he introduced us to Pansy the Chimpanzee and Willy the Worm.

They got to put their hand inside a hard puppet to figure out how to make the mouth and eyes move.

We watched several clips about puppetry; shadow and hard and soft puppets, good puppeteering and bad.  Also, about how to create a personality and voice for your puppets.   

At the end, all the kids got to pick a soft puppet to create a character.

 

In 2 weeks, we go back for our ventriloquism class.

After the co-op, we raced across town to get Cairn to her book club.  They had read Claude Monet.  Andrew and Skylar and I went to the park to play outside since it was 70 degrees.  Then I visited with the moms and the kids continued to play.  We got home super late but everyone was happy with friend time and outside time.  Love the nice weather!!