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Sailing Puppets-PPP Day 12 | Puppet Portal Project - hospital D
2009-10-01

Sailing Puppets-PPP Day 12

The collective theme of this week was travel.

I share Siobhan �s opinion that focus on one common theme makes planning much easier, and allows us to concentrate more on the children and their ideas.

This anyway is a current main task I m tackling: To enable more time and (head) space for play, creative preparation & experimentation, individual attention and valuable evaluation by cutting down the time for practical planning/ organizing and especially the editing work.

Inspired by Emma �s brilliant cranky-technique I used this set up in yesterdays session, both to create a space which would allow for easy filming without the children being visible (to make editing easier) and because the feature of a moving backdrop suggest itself to the theme of travelling.

With a bare paper boat as a starting point, children first discussed where they d travel to and than created a backdrop with all the landscaped and features they �d imagined to see when floating down a river by boat, using collage. (I had brought in a selection of wallpaper samples). Then puppets were made and children explored and played with the cranky- thanks for a great idea Emma it was a success and got them playing! There were two �performances� as well which I filmed- we sang �Row your boat� for a start and one girl made up a song about the sun which was very sweet.

Children were very eager to meet the travelling puppets from the other hospital schools, unfortunately linking up did not work for a sudden disconnection from the internet which was not solved throughout the day.

Still I feel announcing the later link up right from the start and introducing the theme �related situation we d meet up (I suggested the idea of an imagined river which connects our Hospital with the other three) prepared the children well for the Link up- another plus factor of having a common theme I feel!

In the afternoon three kids from the morning and one new boy played with the shadow theme we had �discovered� in the morning session, and they made all sorts of spooky creatures and a little pre-Halloweeny-show , which was filmed with the Vado by one boy who did not want to perform.

Some children drew beautiful story-related images in the Puppet Portal Book which remains in the classroom during the week (see images).

I decorated a display cabinet in the Hospital �s main entrance hall (see images) which was sourced by the Hospital �s PR department. Whilst doing that, lots of passer-by �s commented that �sth: like this�-(a colourful eye catcher) had been missing and that the kids would love it.

I will �update� the display each week and am hoping, in future, to get more chance to talk to curious staff about the project through this.