With ideas I picked up from school and other internet resources I
came up with a puppet show for my son. His puppet theater is named after him
"Sripathi's Silly-pets". And my son had an active role in bringing
this puppet show live. Remember my son has severe hypotonia, cortical visual
impairment and global development delays, so basically he was not completely
aware that he is doing some 'behind the screen' activity for his puppet company and yet he did it!
Basically I used Foam boards and duct tape
to make the puppet stage. (less than $10)
And yes I added lights and curtains to
just fancy up the experience.
And the main part, that is the characters
were all made by Sripathi. Okay the trick was to printout outlines of all the
animal characters. Due to CVI he needs more texture to understand the outline
before finger painting, so I used fabric paint over the outline and let it dry
overnight. Once all the characters are ready I laminated the pictures and cut
them out. I then used Velcro to stick them to foam board sticks that I used to
prop them from behind the theater.
(I already had a laminator ($30 on amazon), just have to buy additional sheets otherwise the cost of lamination at fedex kinkos was too much for a single sheet. You cannot skip this step as otherwise the paper would curl up and spoil the show!)
