Using a Teaching Puppet in your Classroom- SPECIAL ZOOM DISTANCE LEARNING EDITION
Available from August 2020- Special Focus on using your classroom puppet in distance learning.
In this session, led by a professional puppeteer, educators will develop a lovable and effective hand puppet character for their classroom. Puppets can be an effective learning tool, and their impact is exponentially larger when the puppet has good eye contact, a memorable voice, and an interesting back story to keep children focused and communicative. This session will focus on building puppetry technique and sharing methods to use puppets to promote social emotional skills, early literacy, and appropriate behaviors, with extra focus on keeping students participating in distance learning.
Participants should have their own plush hand puppet for the Zoom session.
Useful for Early Learners, Pre K, K, 1st, and 2nd, Librarians, Counselors, Bilingual Educators.
One Hour or Two Hour courses available.
Introductory Offer through September 2020:
One Hour Group Session is $200, accommodates up to 40 teachers (price is for the session, not per teacher).
Two Hour Session is $300, accommodates up to 40 teachers (price is for the session, not per teacher).
We can work with you to combine your school group with another group. We are a vendor and registered arts partner with AISD.
Contact: [email protected]
YSM Link: YSM Glass Half Full Theatre
Caroline Reck studied puppetry with Pam Arciero and Martin Robinson of Sesame Street at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center National Puppetry Conference, and later joined the staff there to teach Movement for Puppeteers. She is the creator of theatrical puppet performances which have toured nationally to major performing arts centers, and has performed puppets in media as diverse as music videos, horror films, and children’s television. She has trained educators in puppetry arts since 2011.
Testimonials:
“Caroline taught us the methods of puppetry while giving us these fun back-pocket tips and tricks. She showed us how to build a character, how to move them to encourage this view of their personality, or how to contrast their words with their motions. She taught us to incorporate practical concerns like audience size/height to our performances, and how volume can change an affectation into something entirely different than you intend; a mean and gravelly puppet might be properly scary and growly for an intimate crowd, for instance, but is merely hard to hear in a bigger room. The class was fun while educational, and I am grateful I had the opportunity to learn from someone who practices what she preaches.”
-G. Gustavo, Creative Action
I really appreciated Caroline’s hands-on instruction. She gave us clear guidance on character building and movement while giving us ample room to play. She was highly receptive to questions which helped me to identify how puppetry could look in my classroom. I especially enjoyed learning about how to transform ordinary objects into puppets!
-L. Spraggins, Creative Action
I couldn’t believe how many very specific techniques were packed into the one workshop! We learned about how to articulate different parts of our hands, how to use different voices, where to direct eye contact, how to build a world around the puppet, and so much more. I had so much fun throughout the workshop! It was presented as play, but we learned tangible, useful tools. I remember feeling excited to use those new skills after the workshop.
I didn’t know a lot of the technical details around puppetry. Before the workshop, I would often default to the same few character voices and techniques for articulating my puppets. But after the workshop, I had easy ways to bring all sorts of variety and show different character traits for different puppets. Caroline’s instruction was easy to follow, inspiring, and above all fun!
I especially loved how she had built an entire world with her snail puppet, and showed us how to invent every detail of what they’re doing when they’re away from us. It really drew me into his world!
– Carolyn Edge, Creative Action
