Home puppet theater for children

Dolls that peek out from behind the screen, speak in a mother's or father's voice, isn't this a wonderful sight for a child? Children enjoy watching performances, and then arrange their own performances for their parents.

You can buy puppets for the theater, you can use ordinary toys, or you can make them yourself with your child.

Puppets for puppet theaters:

■ Puppets are puppets on strings.

■ Cane - puppets, inside of which the "gapit" rod is inserted. Canes are attached to the hands of the puppets - sticks that the puppeteer moves.

■ Tablet, or parquet, dolls - dolls that, with the help of a skilled puppeteer, walk on the floor, on the flooring of the stage, which is called the tablet. That's where their name came from.

■ Glove or hand puppets - put on the hand like a glove. In Russia, such dolls were also called "parsley".

■ Finger puppets. - the name speaks for itself, these are small dolls that are worn on the fingers.

■ Shadow puppets are flat puppets that are usually made from cardboard, leather, or special colored film. They are placed between the light source and the screen or superimposed on the screen from the back, then the shadows become very bright. The actor's hands can also become shadow puppets, if the fingers and palms are correctly folded. With the help of hands, you can get lively, fabulous, quickly changing shadows.

Shadow theater at home

In the evening, when the child goes to bed, he asks you to tell a bedtime story. He is already tired, but he really wants you to stay with him at least a little more. This is truly a great time for both you and your baby. You can literally turn this time into a fairy tale.

Theater of shadows of hands. Find a wall in the child's room with enough free space. Place a light source on a stool or table just behind you, it can be a table lamp or a flashlight. Now, using your hands and objects, you can show your performance.

Time yourself so that after your introduction there is not much time left before you usually turn off the lights in the child's room. Because your child will definitely want to show you how a butterfly flies, a hare jumps, or a magical flower blooms.

Puppet Shadow Theatre. If you want to approach your performance in a more prepared, organized way and are willing to take the time to prepare, then the performance can be made even more interesting.

Use a translucent screen for this, behind which place a light source. Now you will need figures cut out of cardboard, according to the plot of your fairy tale. Dolls are applied from the back to the screen and illuminated from behind. The child sees shadows on the screen, how they move, how they replace each other. If the object is brought closer to the screen, it will decrease in size and become more distinct. If you move it, the object will become larger. Knowing this, you can create giant images: big trees, houses and mountains.

The fingers are alive. Finger puppets.

What does play mean for a child? Play is the child's work, and toys are the tools of his craft. He needs the game so that the child can expand his understanding of the world around him. And if we want to teach a child or explain something important to him, there is nothing better than doing it in a playful way.

Of course, the easiest way is to go to the store and buy small finger toys. Now there are a lot of them in the assortment, they are from different materials and different themes. But finger puppets can be made with your own hands. And it will take a little time to make them.

DIY finger puppets

"Thimble"

You will need: thimble, plasticine, floss threads.

Stages of work:

■ Make hair out of threads and attach them with plasticine to a thimble.

■ Also make eyes and a mouth out of plasticine. If necessary, then the ears or tail. It all depends on your character. If it's an elephant, then it should have a long trunk and big ears, and if it's a piglet, then it should have a snout nose and a small tail at the back.

This method is good because the thimble doll can be remade every time, reincarnating it into new characters for your stories.

Of course, if you want to make the doll so that it can be used many times and you do not plan to remake it, then it is better to use glue to stick the hair on, and paint the eyes and mouth with nail polish or acrylic paints.

Eyes

You can make pretty eyes out of two small fur pompoms (see picture).

You will need: two small fur pompoms, 5 cm cord, colored paper for the eye, scissors, glue. You can take ready-made eyes for dolls. Stages of work:

■ Sew a pom-pom on both sides of the cord.

■ Make eyes out of colored paper and glue to the fur.

Now pass one pompom between the little finger and ring finger, pass the thread from the back of the hand and insert the second pompom between the index and middle fingers.

To get a funny character, keep your fingers together, turn your eyes towards your fingertips.

Second life for old gloves

From an ordinary old children's knitted glove or a women's leather glove, you can create various characters.

To do this, you need to cut off the fingers from the glove and hem them along the bottom so that the knitted fingers-calves do not bloom. From these blanks you can make anything: a bee, a butterfly, a bird or a cute and cute creature.

To create a small doll, you can use threads, beads, various ribbons, voluminous eyes for toys, feathers, wire, etc. Toy parts can be glued or sewn to the body.

Think and create with your kids. After all, a toy that a child will make himself, with his own hands, will be dear to him and the child will treat it carefully and carefully.

Paper finger puppets

Very easy and fast, you can create a paper finger puppet.

You will need: colored paper, scissors, glue, felt-tip pens, floss threads.

Method one.

■ Cut out a 5 cm and 6 cm rectangle from the desired paper color.

■ Roll into a tube and glue the ends together. The blank for the doll is ready.

■ Now cut out eyes, ears, a nose, a skirt, etc. from paper and stick them on the workpiece or draw everything with felt-tip pens.

■ For hair, use floss threads.

Method two.

■ Cut out a sector from colored paper, the corner of which should be straight, with sides of 6 cm.

■ By gluing the sides, you will get a cone - the basis for your doll.

■ If you need hair, make a bunch of floss and glue it inside the top of the cone, as if the hair is growing from the crown.

You can make finger puppets from hardening plasticine or salt dough.

The story behind the screen

The most dear, the most familiar puppet theater for us is a theater where puppeteers are hidden behind a screen, and puppets peek out from behind it. These are, as a rule, cane or glove puppets.

Glove dolls can be sewn or knitted, such dolls will become your children's favorites. After all, this is a soft, fluffy, living toy that you can hug, cuddle and take with you to bed so that it is not scary.

You can make a cane doll with your own hands, but it takes a lot of time to create such a doll. Children aged 12-15 who are fond of puppet theater will be happy to make them themselves. Cane puppets are made from papier-mâché and fabrics.

Of course, there is always a simpler option for home theater - dolls that can be created from things in your home, from improvised materials. Such dolls will delight and amuse children with their unusual appearance.

Making a doll out of a dust brush

Who among your kids hasn't asked for a dusting brush to play with? And what will happen if you make a doll out of it for the theater ...? Even if only for one day. It will take you no more than five minutes to make such a doll.

You will need: shaggy brush, handkerchief, colored paper, glue.

Stages of work:

■ Make two eyes out of colored paper in any way.

■ Tie a scarf on the brush so that it becomes clear - this is the head, and the rest of the body.

■ Glue the eyes to the brush with paper glue.

The doll is ready!

It is convenient to hold such a doll by the handle, when the hand moves, the bristles on the brush move, which gives the doll a funny and lively look.

Dolls can be made from plastic spoons and forks by sticking eyes on them, hair from threads and tying skirts from handkerchiefs to them. Or make from a sock - if you sew on button eyes. You can take a child's toy and carefully tie it to a stick so that it is comfortable to hold.

Screen

You can approach the creation of a screen for the performance thoroughly and make it from fiberboard, sawing out the details with an internal window and sheathing it with material. Make curtains in the window. It will look like a house from a fairy tale, where various miracles take place in the window.

A screen can also be made from an old cardboard box by pasting it with colored paper. You can turn the table on its side or put chairs with a back, only you will need to throw an opaque fabric over them so that the actors are not visible. You can use sports mats if you put them on edge.

You just have to start by showing the child how a puppet theater is created, and the child will pick up the idea and come up with plots, lines and characters himself.

The plot of the play

For a small child of three or four years old, the performance should be based on a simple plot and be short in time. Well-known Russian fairy tales for kids are well suited for this age: “Gingerbread Man”, “Turnip”, “Snow Maiden”, “Fox and Hare”. For older children, five or six years old, fairy tales will be interesting: “Geese-Swans”, “Golden Scallop Cockerel”, “Three Little Pigs”, etc.

Of course, you can come up with a fairy tale yourself, or you can ask the child during the performance what kind of continuation your fairy tale should have, and then the child himself will become a co-author. Immediately, inventing new adventures for your heroes, he will watch the performance with interest.