Puppets & Puppet Theaters

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Archived Q&A and reviews ▼

Parent Q&A

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  • Ventriloquism classes

    –
    Aug 27, 2018

    My 9-year-old daughter wants to take ventriloquism lessons. I'll take recommendations for online classes, but ideally we could work with someone in person. 

    Thanks for any leads!

    Aug 27, 2018

    Wait. This is amazing. My daughter also does ventriloquism. We got "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Ventriloquism" at the bookstore and she practices on her own. (No dummy yet!) Should we get these kids together?! 

    Aug 29, 2018

Archived Q&A and Reviews

Ideas for puppet shows and nice finger puppets

Maybe this is kind of a silly question, but are there scripts somewhere for fun and meaningful puppet shows one could easily perform? I grew up with a puppet theatre overseas and it was always very special. I'm not so much interested in the princess, king, clown & villain tales, but in family, community people, and animal puppets and related stories. Maybe there are certain children's books that just lend themselves to be played. Any leads on where to get scripts, where to buy nice finger puppets are greatly appreciated. I'd also be interested in any comments on what age span is especially fascinated in puppet shows.  Heike

One of my favorite activities at the May Faire and Harvest Faire has always been the puppet show. It is performed by the kindergarten teachers for young children from pre-K through about 3rd grade (although anyone can come), and their parents. The puppets are hand-made cloth dolls with long strings attached, rather like marionettes. So the 'theatre' is not as small as for a finger puppet show, but rather spans the length of several low tables. You can plainly see the teachers' moving the puppets about, but you forget about them in your absorption in the story. The stories usually are fairy tales, but often ones you have never heard before. You might be able to call the school and ask (EBWS - 223-3570), or just look through the Pink, Green, Blue, etc. Fairy Tale books collected by A. Lang, I believe, for ideas. My children have even put on similar shows of their own, using whatever they had at hand. Once they did a great puppet show for The Knight and the Dragon, by Tomie de Paola, using wooden figures we had at home.

Bonnie

Cute puppets can be purchased at Hearthsong... They have finger puppets. I've also fairly successfully made puppets, both with boxes and socks.... I am not at all crafty either. I've also seen cute puppets in the natural baby catalog. Here are some particularly adorable finger puppets:

http://store.yahoo.com/naturalbaby/172522-puppets.html

Amazon also has some.