Puppets!

Today was the first kids' class that I thought went really well, and it's only my third class so I think that's pretty good! Note to self: crafts are the way to go. Movies... not so much.

In honor of Halloween I showed the old Disney version of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. I figured that it would be demonstrative enough that its being in English wouldn't matter. And I know that kids in the US love it when you show a movie, so I was banking on it being enjoyable for the first half hour of class (hey an hour and a half is a long time to teach!). The kids liked it for about 15 minutes and then I lost them. They all kept asking 'Hallas? Hallas?' ('Enough? Enough?) while I told them to hush and watch it. I wanted them to get to the part with the Headless Horseman at least, but that isn't until the very very end of the movie. With only about a minute left, I tried to stop it, but apparently one little boy was really into it and wanted to finish!

I was worried that since the kids hadn't really liked the film, they wouldn't get the idea of making the characters into puppets, and I'd spent hours the night before cutting out identical gingerbread man shaped pieces of cardboard. But the students latched on immediately and spent the last hour of class seriously engaged in creating little versions of Katrina Van Something (I forget), which explains all of the pink skirts in the photo. If you look closely you'll see a couple of Headless Horsemen and even an Ichabod Crane (the Ichabod Crane is the one with the pointy nose.

Now I have to make a little puppet theater by the next class so that we can perform The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. They all seem pretty excited by the prospect of playing with the puppets and taking them home. They cheered!

Boy did that make me feel like a good teacher :)