One of the most surprising early literacy questions we’ve encountered is about puppets. It came from a youth librarian whose director insisted that he couldn’t see how using puppets “has any value whatsoever, as far as early literacy is concerned.” “What can I tell him?” she asked us.
Oh, my. Where to start?
Print motivation, most likely. What motivates children more than having fun? Puppets are nothing if not fun. A puppet sharing a story enchants a preschool crowd every time. Here’s a talking point to share with the director: “Young children who get excited about books and stories are motivated to learn to read. Research shows that motivation is absolutely essential because learning to read is hard work. The motivation has to be there. Puppets are star motivators. Whenever they are on the scene, it’s all pure fun and children want more of it.”
Puppets are nothing if not fun. A puppet sharing a story enchants a preschool crowd every time.
Then there’s narrative skills. What do puppets do best? They tell stories. When early literacy specialists discuss narrative skills, they never fail to mention the value of “pretend play,” “acting out the story,” or “encouraging the child to be the storyteller.” What better way to understand sequencing, an important reading skill, than to put a story together? The physical presence of puppets helps children remember what happens, and in what order, in a story. Children learn about prediction when they wait breathlessly as a puppeteer builds up suspense, preparing for the next puppet to pop out of a bag. Librarians can get young children off to a good start by helping them use puppets to retell a story they’ve just read. When we point out that the puppets will act out the story from the book, we emphasize the early literacy skill print awareness.
All of this naturally leads to vocabulary development, another early literacy building block. Words emerge almost magically, even from usually reticent children, once they have a puppet in their hands. We can’t help smiling when we think about what Carol Edwards, the Denver Public Library’s children’s services manager, wrote several years ago on the Association for Library Services to Children listserv about using puppets: “Everyone loved the moment when they would appear…. Words flowed from children and parents as they began to play and talk about whatever we had presented in storytime. The literacy tips of ECRR (Every Child Ready to Read @ your library) helped the parents develop their own wordplay and often both parent and child would practice a new rhyme or song with the puppet or talk about something that interested them.”
So there’s the opportunity to add phonological awareness to the puppets’ bag of early literacy tricks. Who wouldn’t want to sing a fun new song along with a cool puppet? And that leaves just one of the major early literacy skills—letter knowledge. We’ll defer to Sesame Street’s Bert and Ernie on that one.
As we mentioned in our January column, the new version of Every Child Ready to Read @ your library emphasizes five practices that support early literacy skills: talking, singing, reading, writing, and playing with children. Puppets talk and sing; we read to learn stories for the puppets to tell; and of course, all of this is imaginative play. It’s easy to think of ways to add writing to this repertoire: writing down words for the puppets to say or writingan invitation to a puppet play.
Our colleague Steven Engelfried has been using puppets in storytimes for years. He recently started a delightful blog called “Beyond the Book Storytimes,” where he shares his insights about how storytime puppetry helps young audiences develop early literacy skills. This is the go-to blog not only for creative ideas to borrow for your own storytimes, but also for some good specifics to share with any director who wants to know why you’re wild about puppets.