The Art of Puppetry - Bringing Stories to Life with Puppets
Puppetry has been used for thousands of years as a form of storytelling and entertainment.
Loved by young & old. Puppetry requires creativity to perform and even to experience.
Puppets take many shapes, sizes and styles. Whether it be finger puppets, hand puppets or marionettes they all draw the audience into a captivating and enchanting form of play.
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"Fairytales come to life through the magical narration of a fictional character."
it defines the term "make believe"
Puppets are often loved in a similar way to teddy bears, dolls and other soft toys.
However, the fact that they can come to life makes them even better. Something about the coming to life of an inanimate object fascinates people of all ages.
.."children will often play along with a crocodile puppet that tells them to brush their teeth more than the parent directly."
Playing with puppets has many interesting benefits. The roleplay involved can have great effects on empathy, social skills and creativity. Entering into a character role and playing out scenarios, especially while in stages of brain development, has been proven to be highly beneficial for a range of social, emotional and communicative outcomes. As well as being a great skill for performance and fun.
Puppets can be used in many ways, whether it be by teachers, parents, children or used for therapy and clinical development.
Used for Storytime
They are most comonly used either to play out known stories to amplify the romance of storeies or as an open ended character to create new stories or make up random interactions. Puppets can be a great tool and a loved character who developes their own personalities, traits and relationships
Used for Teaching/Learning
Puppets are also useful for direct learning, an example of this might be a crocodile puppet talking about oral hygeine or a dinosaur talking about anti bullying. As the puppet is not the human using it, there is often a degree of seperation which can be used to your advantage.
In order to relate to the puppet peoples creative side of their brain has to kick in to fill in the blanks and ommit the person engaging it. Children will often listen more to a character than a human. Its more entertaining and has more creativity for the viewer..
Then they can also be used in more clinical or therapeutic scenarios due to this phenomena.
Puppets bring out a degree of playfulness in young and old which is beautiful to watch.
They force you to be present and in the moment.
Earth Toys is based in Cairns, North Queensland and has a great variety of puppets.
Earth Toys is based in Cairns, North Queensland and has a great variety of puppets.
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We have been selling Folkmanis Puppets for many years and are a proud stockist. Folkmanis are Brilliant. We love their stage puppets aswell as the finger puppets.
Recently we have discovered Hansa puppets which we are also really happy to have for their gorgeous ultra realistic animal toys. I particularly love the Possum, which is in the Video above.
.Finger Puppets are often overlooked. This may be due to how they are less posable and manipulatable than their larger counterparts. However you might be shocked to find that there is a few basic tips and poses that can be introduced to really bring finger puppets to life.
You might be shocked at how much value you can get from finger puppets.
Thankyou for reading. I hope this inspires you to play, create and explore the world of puppetry.
