Puppet Theaters, Pools, and Playtime

I’ve been trying to digitize as many of my old film photos as I can, and as I do that, I find so many fun ideas for blog posts!

As I go through the photos, I’m re-living the fun we had at home, simply playing,  when my kids were little. They loved puppets, (maybe because I loved puppets so much?), and we had a few different ways to get a puppet theater up fast. This picture shows one of the simplest–a big piece of cardboard to hide behind!  To do the puppet show, they knelt behind the cardboard and only the puppets showed.  (Puppets showed – puppet show.  See what I did there? 😀)

My favorite quick puppet theater, though, was the curtain rod across the door or hallway version.  (Wish I had a picture!)  Simply get a tension rod (the kind with the rubber caps on the ends), and place one between a doorway or a hallway.  Drape a sheet or blanket over the rod for the puppeteers to hide behind. Adjust the height, so that your kids can either kneel or stand. Voila, instant puppet theater!

You can, of course,  make an elaborate one if you like, with colorful fabric and a square window cut out, etc.) The great thing about this, though, is that if you have a tension rod and a blanket, you can throw a simple one of these up in just a few minutes.  My kids loved this. They would write plays and act them out with the puppets or re-enact their favorite scenes from movies. (Don’t even worry if you don’t have puppets. Just use stuffed toys, home-made paper puppets, etc.)

Nostalgia is a wonderful thing, isn’t it? What would we do without photos?  So, here are some other playtime pictures I came across,  (My”kids” are now 21 and 24 years old!)

Have fun!