When Shadows Come Alive

Inspired by a morning of crafting shadow puppets and watching our children perform a shadow puppet show, I asked Annabelle whether she might like to try making and putting on our own shadowy show at home.  To my delight, she shouted, “Yes! Yes!”

Together we headed for her bookcase where she picked out a story for us to read and perform.  Her choice?  One of my favorites, Cow Moo Me by Stephen Losordo.   First, we read the story, with Annabelle chiming in to help with sound effects; for the reading, she became each animal, letting out a moo, slurp, neigh, cluck, hoo, buzz, and croak.  She truly is a dramatic reader.

After reading the story the first time, I asked her to pick out an animal from the story that we could draw and make into a puppet.  First we created the horse, then the pig, and eventually (because I am a story geek and love this stuff) we turned every single character from the story into a shadow puppet.

Since Annabelle is just 2 and she is learning to draw and cut, I gave her tasks related to making the puppets. Below she is cutting along the lines of a circle that she drew on card stock.

After drawing each character onto a piece of card stock and cutting it out, we used masking tape to secure a drinking straw to the base of our puppet.  We then turned off the lights, turned on a flashlight, and let the puppets move across the stage (a blank wall in our dining room).

When a crafty afternoon, a piece of paper, and a story become an entertaining show . . .

ordinary drawings become mysterious and lively animations,

a cow moos, incessantly (to our delight),

a bee buzzes around,

the horse trots by, neighing all the while,

and a chicken cluck, cluck, clucks.

Of course, there were other animals, noises, and shadowy movements to our show, but I will let your imagines take course from here.  And just for the record, my husband says that Annabelle and I put on a fine shadow puppet show.  Hoorah!  More shadow puppet fun in our future, for sure!

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