Puppet play invites kids to experiment with a range of emotions, and allows adults to model empathy in a gentle and playful way. In this activity, kids use nature treasures, socks, markers, and glue to create puppets that can be used to explore emotions and body language.
The Guide
Step 1: Gather puppet making materials.
Gather an old sock, some lightweight nature treasures (e.g. leaves, small sticks, flower petals), some markers and some glue.
Step 2: Invite kids to make a puppet.
Show your child the materials you gathered and ask, "Do you think we could turn this sock into a puppet?"
Welcome kids to arrange and glue treasures on to their sock to make the features of their puppet. Wonder together what materials they could use to make eyes, a nose, mouth, hair and any other features they would like to add. Leave your puppet in the sun to dry.
Step 3: Explore emotions and body language.
Once the puppet is dry, invite your child to tell you all about their puppet friend and how it is feeling today. How can the puppet show how it is feeling with its body? Invite kids to move their puppet in different ways to show the six universal human emotions (happy, sad, angry, scared, surprised, disgusted).
Extend Play!
Gather a few more socks and put on a puppet show together. Can you tell a story about a time when your puppet was feeling sad, happy, surprised, etc?
Dance with your puppet friend. How do different songs make the puppet feel?
Make a cozy space for your puppet friend to feel safe and calm.
Why is this activity great for kids?
The process of making a puppet activates creativity and problem solving skills and produces a "friend" that kids can use anywhere. Exploring how the puppet expresses emotions through movement and body language supports emotional empathy. As kids engage in puppet play, they try on different personas and emotions as they build their cognitive empathy skills.
By creativity, we mean the ability to both imagine original ideas or solutions to problems and actually do what needs to be done to make them happen. So, to help kids develop creativity, we parents need to nurture kids' imaginations and give them lots of chances to design, test, redesign and implement their ideas.
"Creativity is as important now in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.”
Why, you ask? For one, it is through being creative that a person is able to get senses, sensibility and spirit working together. Simply put, without creativity, we don't think our kids will live a full life.
On a more practical level, it's also the means by which humans of all ages make an impact on the world and other people around them. A lot of heavy stuff is going to go down in our kids' lifetime, and their generation will need to imagine and implement solutions to big and very complicated problems. Although our kids are still far from public office or the boardroom, today's political and business leaders worldwide are already pointing to creativity as the most important leadership quality for the future.
Although years from the art studio or design lab, little kids can learn to think and act creatively if you give them time and the right practice.
Imagination
Category:
Thinking Skills
What is Imagination?
Imagination is defined in many ways, but one we like is, "the act or power of forming a mental image of something not present to the senses or never before wholly perceived in reality." This is no small task to little kids, and yet young childhood is a time in which imagination is developed more than any other. How does imagination develop in childhood? Through an increasingly sophisticated life of make believe.
We all likely have a sense of what we mean by make believe or good old "pretend play." How do experts define it, though? To some, there are different types of make believe that vary in sophistication and make pretend play different than other types of play. For example, kids may use objects to represent something else (e.g. a block becomes a cell phone). Or, they may start to give an object certain properties (e.g. a doll is asleep or a tree is on fire!). Still yet, they may themselves take on the properties of someone or something else.
From there, pretend play evolves into acting out scenarios or stories, those getting increasingly intricate as imagination develops. As kids' pretend play grows more sophisticated, these stories come to involve not only the creative use of objects, but multiple perspectives (e.g. good and bad guys in the same story), and/or the playful manipulation of ideas and emotions (e.g. I am sad, but then become happy after I save the village from certain doom).
Why does it matter?
An ever growing body of research substantiates the many benefits of pretend play including the enhanced development of: language and communication skills; self-control and empathy; flexible and abstract thinking; and creativity. These are the skills that will help kids balance emotions, form healthy relationships, work effectively on teams, stay focused in school, be successful at various jobs and solve the problems of an increasingly complicated world. An individual's creativity in particular, both requires and is limited by her imagination.
Empathy
Category:
Social Skills
What is Empathy?
Simply put, empathy is the ability to think and care about the feelings and needs of others. The good news is, the more we study, it appears that children are empathetic by nature. All we need to do is nurture it in them—that of course is now always easy. Even though young children are simply working on gaining control over their emotions and won’t learn to really think about their emotions and the cause and effect of their behavior on others until their school years, they can start to develop the foundation for empathy much earlier. Taking actions (and watching adults take actions) that benefit other people, caring for animals and their environment and even just wondering how other people or creatures are feeling helps build both positive habits and a strong base for the development of empathy.
Why does it matter?
Empathy is at the root of what psychologists call “pro-social” behavior—behavior that people must develop in order to develop a conscience, build close relationships, maintain friendships, and develop strong communities. Empathy also helps kids avoid bullying, one of the most worrisome social challenges young kids face. Being able to think and feel for others can keep kids from becoming either bully or victim and equip them to stand up for others who are bullied. Imagine if all kids had such tools!
Age: 0 to 8+
Time: 1 hour+
Materials: sock, lightweight nature treasures, markers, glue
