Puppetry

The more I think about it, the more I think that puppetry is the way to go tomorrow night. One, it can be easily adapted for a million age groups. Two, children nowadays seem to be really craving it. There's a concrete product (ie. a puppet) to go home to mom and dad, and, best of all the children can engage fully in imaginative play, create stories and make them as complex or as simple as they wish. So I think we will do this:

read The Little Red Hen

(I haven't done it yet, so why not!)

with making play dough

and some kids will break off here and do modeling the whole time

and the basket of silks

and some kids will break off here and do dress ups the whole time

and the felt finger puppets to show how you can tell the story with puppets

and felt and finger puppet patterns and sewing things for the older children

and paper and crayons and popsicle sticks for the younger children

and socks and buttons and notions for the middle children

and we can all make up stories all night long!


I am not sure about how the group will gel -- if they want to run around or sit and focus on a craft so this seems pretty open ended and since it was billed as "stories and activities" I think it meets the criteria of the night. The children can make it what they want it to be. Simple set up on my end, and easy to tweak if the night goes horribly wrong. Ha ha.

We'll see how it goes!

Then toddlers are making finger puppets too on Saturday so if these children are from the same family (older and younger) they can do stories together. How sweet.