When you start working as a teacher, you must always work on yourself and improve in order to have a better relationship with children. In college, we learned what methods and techniques to use when teaching, but when you start working actively with children, something more is needed in order to improve this process.
Life in the world of computers and information technologies provides an opportunity for children from the earliest age to face various complex problems and tasks that need to be solved at a certain time, and puppet games help to better understand the complexity of social life. In the world of computers, games, animated cartoons, the teacher should make sure that reading, reciting, talking, playing and puppets do not lose their significance.
The use of a doll in the teaching process helps us to be consistent in setting rules, requirements in learning, and at the same time to be careful and sensitive to children's emotions and needs. The doll helps us to enter the children's inner world of emotions and gives us a way to get better involved in it. Puppet games give us the opportunity to understand what children really need, to love and accept them exactly as they are, but also to adequately guide them in the teaching process through the most important form of learning - play.
The use of this learning method is based on the fact that when we create a familiar, child-friendly environment, we create an atmosphere that allows the child to focus and develop cognitive abilities.
A child who learns through puppet games has the ability to understand his peers, to empathize with them and to see the world from their perspective.
The teacher should be a child and allow the game to take him into the world of imagination.
A teacher in the role of a puppeteer
When he first takes a puppet in his hands, the teacher should think in advance what he will say to his audience. In order for children to be interested and involved in the process of puppet games, the basic task of the teacher is to think about what they will say when they represent the puppet, what the puppet could say.
The teacher gives the puppet a voice. Care must be taken that this voice is not strange and incomprehensible to children. Usually, a slightly higher or lower voice than usual is a good trick that interests children. When the teacher revives the puppet, there is no need to hide behind a screen, because it doesn't matter to the children. They experience the puppet, it is in their focus and then they are drawn into the realm of imagination.
A puppet that moves its mouth
There are many types of puppets. When possible, it is best to choose a puppet with mouth movements. Kids have fun manipulating a doll that moves their mouths.
The most important thing is movement
It is important that the puppet stays "alive". Movement is most important in puppet animation, even when not speaking. In conversation with children, it is important to make small, gentle movements; the puppet must not "sleep".
It often happens that children comment: "It's not a real boy!", "It's not a real bird!".
In such situations, it is very important that the teacher does not deny it, but to answer that it is a puppet, but that their imagination gives it reality.
In the older classes, the puppet is used in a way that is most appropriate for their age. Older children can become quite skilled in manipulating puppets, which enables many more teaching possibilities for integrating puppet-drama games into teaching contents.
Peer support
The most productive are those classes when older students make a puppet-interactive story and present it to younger students. It is a rich learning experience. It is especially important when high school students are involved in this type of teaching. Children learn from each other the easiest and best.
Rejection of the game
The child meets the doll in the earliest childhood. However, there are children who refuse to work with a doll. There are children who will not participate in puppet games. Such children should be allowed to watch the game from the side. Very quickly, observing his peers, the introverted child just joins the game.
Establishing order in the classroom
A puppet can be a good assistant to any teacher. Starting school is stressful for every child. The puppet helps us to establish the rules in an easy and interesting way.
