Youth Group Puppet Workshop at Dallas Life

Our church has a puppet ministry that some of our youth are involved in.  On Saturday, we took our puppet team, plus a few extra volunteers to Dallas Life, which is a homeless ministry in south Dallas.  The agenda for the afternoon was to perform a puppet show for the kids, have them make their own puppets, then they'd learn how to perform with their puppets. 

I found some fabulous puppet templates at this site.  I figured it would be easiest to have templates available for making specific puppets, although the kids were certainly free to make whatever creative puppets they could come up with on their own.  I made some mock-ups to bring along, so they could see what they would look like finished. 

The cat and the owl were my personal favorites, but the kids immediately gravitated towards the lion.  We ran out of lion templates in the first 10 minutes!  Making puppets kept the kids occupied for a good hour.

A few of the children's creations:

The kids then gathered in front of the puppet stage to watch a show:

Then, the kids went in small groups to perform with their own puppets.  (If I never hear the Veggie Tales' "Oh Where Is My Hairbrush" again, it will be too soon.) 

I won't lie.  It was an exhausting afternoon, and I didn't even do all that much!  (Swollen from heat + pregnancy, so I sat much of the time with my feet up, although I did help a kid cut stuff out.  I also pulled out my teacher voice at one point when the kiddos wouldn't be still or quiet for their peers' performance.  They actually listened to me.  Still got it!  Oh, and I became the bathroom lady who took kids to the bathroom.  That's a new one for me!)  It was a rewarding afternoon, though.  The kids seemed to have a good time, their parents got a little time off to do whatever they needed/wanted to do that afternoon, and our students enjoyed the opportunity to share the Lord and do outreach among the less fortunate in our area.  Totally worth it!