Eunice Wright

The depth of projects, songs, and additional enrichment suggestions was great in this book. I am a homeschooling mom currently, but have been both a public school teacher and a public librarian in the past and could easily see this book being a valuable resource to anyone involved in educating children, especially in reading and language arts. My girls are both in the targeted age range and enjoyed the projects we tried from the book--but truthfully, their favorite application thus far has been choosing one of the illustrations to color (I make photocopies), trace, and/or use as a model for their own drawings.… (plus d'informations)

Paper sack puppets is a book that every household that has young children should not be without. In our house we have our 9 year old son, our 7 year old daughter, and last but not least our 4 year old daughter. They all loved the book and we're thrilled with all of the cool patterns and with the cool songs and poems.
Watching they make the puppets adding their special touches to each one and they putting on their puppet shows was truly priceless. My hat is off to the author and to the publisher for making a true family fun book. Hopefully this will be the first of many more to come.… (plus d'informations)

The subtitle on this book (60+ Easy Patterns and Activities for Librarians, Teachers and Parents) points to the audience for this title: adults prepared to make the paper sack puppets as teaching aids for children's use in the classroom, during library programming, or in working with their own children. As my experience with paper sack puppets has generally included having them constructed by the children themselves, this focus surprised me. An important point that the authors emphasize in the preface is that "puppets never fight with each other, unless it is part of the 'act.'" Suggesting such embellishments as laminating the cardstock puppet characters before affixing the to the paper bags indicates that these puppets are primarily designed to be made by adults. The authors notes that if young children are making puppets close supervision is advised. The book itself is divided into three sections: a storybook section, an alphabet section, and a section for puppet family members. Each pattern can be used with several different stories and all the patterns come with a section following labeled "Additional activities."
The additional activities include songs, poems, nursery rhymes, games and group activities, and suggested books, movies, and television that work with the stories. The alphabet puppets could be used by classroom teachers to introduce letters to their kindergarten and pre-kindergarten students. The patterns include those that use full-body and others that are just heads. Patterns can be copied on a copier and while most are full size, those that need to be enlarged include information as to the percentage of enlargement needed. This is a useful tool for educators and a fun tool for parents who want to work with their children to create clever paper puppets.… (plus d'informations)