Puppets For Moppets

 

            Today's snack: With cookie cutters in the shapes of animals, hearts, stars and so forth, cut shapes out of thin slices of bologna and cheese, and encourage your child to act out a short little puppet show with them . . . and then eat them!

 

--------------------

 

Any way you can help your small child learn to listen, you're laying the groundwork for a future as a good student. Listening is one of the most important skills for school, and one of the easiest, most enjoyable ways to learn.

 

 

So here's a fun way to help your child learn to listen, with an immediate payoff: find hand puppets that are characters in a story that you can read aloud while your child acts out the story.

 

            Examples: a frog and a toad for the Frog and Toad series; a mouse puppet with various props for If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, or a monkey puppet for the Curious George series.

 

            As your small child listens to you read the story, he or she is processing the vocabulary and matching the meaning of it to actions that will portray the story line. That takes a lot of brain work, organization and planning. Feel free to pause in between sentences or sections to give your child time to react, and center stage.

 

            Later, when your child can read, it might be fun for him or her to be the narrator, and you do the acting. Let puppetry get you on a roll, and take turns taking center stage. It's always fun to . . . change roles!