Small World “Puppets”

The Basic Idea

Soft toys, pegs, sticks – anything hand sized can be used in small world play to represent characters from your story. Use voices, sound effects and movement to bring them to life.

Over To You, Wee One

Keep everything in a bag or box, then introduce each object/character as they appear in the story – as soon as you’ve established who they are, ask who wants to “be” that character and hand it over so they can bring the story to life.

Cheeky Bonuses

• Physical and visual representations of characters make stories more relevant and engaging
• Observing and naming emotions that characters show explores the language in a safe way

Variations

• Do your wee ones enjoy drawing characters? If so, glue their drawings to strong card and attach a stick to make shadow puppets to play with
• Wind different coloured wool around sticks or tie scraps of material onto them, chatting about the characters as you make them.

And Remember...

Young children are usually pretty accepting of abstract ideas – but if you introduce e.g. a stick as a characters and they tell you you’re wrong, it’s a great opportunity! Send them to hunt for something they think would be better, and give them the chance to share their own ideas.