Stick Puppets

Activity Overview

Rereading and revisiting familiar stories in new ways is an important part of early childhood literacy. As the child learns the ins and outs of a new text, they practice important reading skills like retelling. Retelling helps children build comprehension and enables early learners to understand story structure. In this activity, students practice retelling a familiar story with dramatic aides.

What You Need

• Let’s Bee Friends by Anna Prokos on Epic

• Cardstock or other durable paper

• Markers, crayons, or colored pencils

• Child scissors

• Two jumbo craft sticks or popsicle sticks

• Glue stick or tape

Steps

1. Read Let’s Bee Friends by Anna Prokos. As you read, discuss the story using the guiding questions.

2. Guide your student in identifying the main characters in the story (Bear and Bee). Ask your student to make stick puppets for the main characters following these steps:

   1. Draw the characters.

   2. Cut out the characters.

   3. Attach the characters to a popsicle stick using a glue stick or tape.

Important Note: Allow your student to do as much of the stick puppet creation on their own as they are able. Encourage them to represent the characters in whichever way they feel is appropriate. The goal is not for their drawing to mirror the image presented in the book, but rather for your student to express themselves as they create their own representations of the characters. As they work, validate and acknowledge their representations of the characters.

3. Read the story again, encouraging your student to act it out with their stick puppets as you read.

Guiding Questions

• Who is this?

• How did Bear help Bee?

• How did Bee help Bear?

• Why did Bee say Bear was her friend?

• How do you help your friends?

• How do you feel when you help your friend?

• How do you feel when your friend helps you?

Extensions

• Create the stick puppets using other methods, such as painting or building from found materials.

• What other characters do you want to make to add to this story? Create stick puppets for those characters and tell the story using them.

• Print out pictures or make stick puppets for characters from other books you enjoy reading. Tell the story using those stick puppets.

• Use your stick puppets to tell a story in your Shadow Puppet Show.