Curated OER
The Ancient Art of Shadow Puppet Plays
Shadow puppetry has an ancient past, it is also a great way to build oral expression and reading fluency. Young thespians research folk tales, compare and contrast reality and fantasy, then create and perform a shadow puppet play based...
Curated OER
Shadows & Light, Science & Puppetry
Lights, shadows, action, and inquiry await your artistic scientists. They explore the way light travels, absorbs, reflects, and transmits through shadow play. They create folktale-inspired shadow puppets, explore the science of light,...
Curated OER
Chinese Shadow Puppets
Students explore Chinese culture by performing a shadow puppet play. They create the puppets, develop a script, and rehearse and perform a play which illustrates an understanding of Chinese stories and traditions.
Curated OER
Being Shadowed
What causes a shadow to appear? Have kindergartners and first graders explore shadows with a fun science activity. After reading a short paragraph about light sources, they draw a shadow for a little girl based on the location of the...
American Museum of Natural History
Make Your Own Mythic Mask or Puppet
No need to wait until Halloween to create a mask. Young anthropologists get involved in the centuries-old tradition of mask and puppet making with the help of an engaging resource that shows them how to craft their own masks or puppets.
Curated OER
Shadow Puppets
Students experiment with the effects that various light and puppet positions have on shadows they make with their hands and arms. They work in pairs to trace their shadows and create puppets with the silhouettes. Afterward, they make...
Curated OER
The Science of Shadow Puppets
Students explore the art of shadow puppetry. In this performing arts lesson, students study the functions of lighting in the puppet theater as they examine the transmission, absorption, and reflection of light. As a culminating activity,...
Curated OER
The World of Puppets
Students visit given web-sites to find out what puppets look like in different countries and then make a puppet and write a play for it.
Curated OER
Chinese Shadow Puppets
Students explore the art of Chinese shadow puppetry. They create puppets, develop and rehearse scripts and perform a show in front of the class.
Curated OER
Javanese Wayang Kulit Lesson Plan
Fourth graders study the history and culture associated with Javanese Shadow Puppets and the perspective that is used during performances. They design original shadow puppets and give a shadow puppet performance using their creations.
Curated OER
Ninja Puppets
In this ninja craft worksheet, students follow the directions to cut out and color a ninja pattern to make a puppet. This is in response to the Magic Tree House book Night of the Ninjas.
It's About Time
Color
How can a hand puppet's shadow look like a dog? The lesson explains the science behind shadows, combining paint colors and the colors used in old televisions. Scholars use white, red, blue, and green lights to experiment with colors and...
Curated OER
Shadow Theater of the Mahabharata
Students explore the Hindu epic, Mahabharata, by creating Javanese shadow puppets and performing significant scenes from the story. They combine their artistic ability with their desire to learn an important aspect of the Southeast Asian...
Curated OER
Have a Thai day!
Students participate in a fund raiser for the Thai Children's trust. In this sociology instructional activity, students prepare for a Thai Day by making puppets, having a cake sale, making fans, and performing Thai dances.
Curated OER
Legends in Their Own Times
Students learn folk tales from many different cultures and retell them using the medium of their choice. They write about the cultural indications found in these tales.
Johnson County Community College
Treasured Stories by Eric Carle
Explore the works of Eric Carle with a set of four lessons focused around the stories, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?, Papa, Please Get the Moon For Me, and The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Young readers develop a storyboard,...
Curated OER
Dialogue Disguises
Students read a story out loud to a partner and change their voices and expressions when depicting specific characters. In this language arts lesson plan, students focus on the person's voice who is reading to them, while keeping track...
Florida State University
Florida State University: Molecular Expressions: Shadowbox Theatre
Have you ever thought about your shadow? One way to learn about them is to make your own shadow box theater--once a very popular form of entertainment in Europe during the 1800s and early 1900s.
![North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences: Groundhog Day 2010 [Pdf] Lesson Plan](https://d15y2dacu3jp90.cloudfront.net/images/attachment_defaults/resource/large/FPO-knovation.png "North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences: Groundhog Day 2010 [Pdf] Lesson Plan")
Other
North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences: Groundhog Day 2010 [Pdf]
Designed for Grades K-8, this teaching guide is chock-full of ideas for celebrating Groundhog Day, with activities like making shadow puppets, examining weather lore and studying cloud formations.
PBS
Pbs Learning Media: Activity Starters: Peg + Cat
Be deliberate when inviting your student to watch a PBS KIDS show. These resources can help by adding meaningful conversation and easy activities to their experience. This site includes 5 Peg + Cat activity starters: Conversation Cards:...
Khan Academy
Khan Academy: Storytelling in Ritual and Performance in Bali
Balinese stories are continually told and retold. The Kayonan is the first and last puppet seen in the Balinese wayang shadow theater. As it dances, it symbolizes the living tradition of storytelling that deeply explains and entertains,...