By playing with puppets, your tamaiti can learn communication skills, empathy, and social interaction. Tamariki can make sense of their world by exploring different roles and characters, and expressing themselves in a safe and playful environment.
You use puppets to help your tamaiti learn about different cultural traditions, languages, and customs, and encourage them to appreciate and respect diversity.
Tips for using puppets at home#
You can buy puppets, or your tamaiti can make their own.
Puppets can be used on the finger, the hand, on a string, or on a stick.
They can be included in a range of activities, such as during music and movement.
Start simply by using puppets to tell a well-known story such as 'How Māui Slowed the Sun' or 'Little Red Riding Hood'. Or, you could use puppets along with well-known songs such as 'Pusi Nofo', 'Five Little Ducks', or 'Heads, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes'.
Use the puppets with music and songs your tamariki know well, then encourage them to use the puppets themselves.
Ideas for equipment
- A range of puppets in different shapes and sizes, including hand puppets, finger puppets, and marionettes made from different materials such as fabric, paper, or felt.
- Different materials such as paper bags, bottle tops, felt, pipe cleaners, cardboard tubing, old socks, paper, and pompoms to make puppets.
- A puppet theatre or a place to hide behind to do puppet shows.
- Music to support the puppet show.
- Storybooks to inspire puppet play.
Learning with puppets#
Puppets can help your tamaiti to:
- practise vocabulary, sentence structure, and communication skills
- learn to take turns and cooperate with each other express and explore feelings
- think outside the box and develop their own ideas
- explore and express their identity.
Support your tamaiti#
You can support your tamaiti by:
- modelling puppets play to tell stories and share ideas
- providing a range of interesting puppets and puppet-making materials
- sharing rhymes and stories that can then be retold using puppets to act out
- asking open-ended questions and providing prompts to creative storytelling
- encouraging them to create puppets that represent themselves, your whānau | family and your culture.
