Shadow Puppet Theatre

This is a very late post but I wanted to still share. One of my favorite things that I did with my students this year was a shadow puppet show. I wanted them to be involved in the process of creating their own play. Kids have more ownership and feel more excited to perform something that they created. I went through setting, characters, problem and solution, and the basic plot outline with them. The decided all of these things. I did this activity the previous year but found that kinders don't last very long on stage without some sort of song or dance to hold their attention. Instead of a regular play, I decided to create a shadow puppet play based off the ideas that they gave me. I knew that all the students would not be able to be the puppeteers so I created a chorus of song effects for the show. I put in repeated words that would trigger a sound effect and movement. I hoped that this would keep them engaged throughout the story.
They created puppets for the performance. They were not as detailed as the picture above. In fact you were lucky if you could tell what the puppet was. But they were proud of what they had made, and that is what is important to me. I brought in a sheet, lamp, and created a little shadow puppet stage for them.

Here was our story: There was a pizza man who made very special and unique pizzas. But one day every time he put them in the oven, they would disappear. He called on some super heroes to help him solve the mystery: Super Kid, Super Bunny, and Super Cat. Super Cat was able to use his might vision to catch the criminal.It turned out that Rocky, who was the pet dinosaur of Mrs. Sabrina, had been sneaking in and eating all the pizzas.

The sound effects when a little like this.
Narrator: The pizza man rolled out the dough for the pizza
All: ch, ch (they make a motion like they are rolling out dough)
Narrator: Spread on the special sauce
All: Mmmmmmm
Narrator: And carefully put on the crazy topping
All: plop plop
Narrator: All put the pizza in the oven.
All: (Motions wiping hand to get flour off)
Narrator: The timer went off
All: Ding
Narrator: But when the pizza man opened the oven the pizza was gone.
All: Oh no!

I think the sound effects helped them stay engaged but it was still a struggle to keep them focused to rehearse.

No usually I would narrate something like this but I had one student who was a fantastic reader. Way above kindergarten level. She was able to read anything I gave her and narrated the entire show. I also let other students who were not the puppeteers do the voices of the different characters.

We performed it for the parents. I thought it went pretty well, I was most excited to do something different and unique with them.