Today’s activity is the first of a three-part extended activity. Extended activities play a key role in deepening children's knowledge and understanding of skills that enrich their learning experience. Part one of this experience will be to create puppets. Puppets are one of the perfect tools to capture children’s attention. Have fun creating a sock puppet together and enjoy giving life to it!

What You will Need 

Process 

Engaging with Your Child 

Puppets are magical, exciting and fun! Simply observe how children respond to puppets. They usually love to speak with puppets, use puppets to retell stories from their imagination or even use the puppet to express their feelings and thoughts.

You can begin your activity by encouraging your child to collect materials to create a fun sock puppet for a new movie or show you would like to create together. Use this opportunity to enrich your child’s vocabulary by naming out different body parts that you would like to create on your puppet (Eyes, mouth, nose, ears, arms, etc.). If your child has the verbal skills, ask them open-ended questions during the process of creating their sock puppet, “Why did you choose those items?”, “What are you naming your puppet?”, “Tell me about your puppet?”, “How did you create that?”, etc. Open-ended questions give your child the opportunity to express their thoughts and ideas and strengthen their communication skills through a meaningful interaction.

Create a puppet alongside your child and remember to praise your child’s efforts into creating their sock puppets. After you have completed your sock puppets, wear your puppet with a funny voice and let your child lead the play. Puppets are a magical way for your child to develop their speaking skills. Enjoy the fun!