Bubbler Maker Corps at Madison Public Libraries: Making at Allied Dr. Learning Center

We are really excited that with Maker Corps help, we are able to expand our hands-on making and learning opportunities, not just to the different neighborhood libraries, but to community partners in Madison as well. This Thursday, we kicked off our month long partnership with Allied Drive learning center's summer program making animal puppets with kindergarten and 1st graders.

We needed some inspiration for our maker project, and what better inspiration for puppets than Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear? by Bill Martin and Eric Carle. With awesome inspiration for odd animals, vibrant colors, AND ideas for the sounds our puppets could make in play made it a fun and hysterical choice. 15 1st graders bellowing like walruses? Priceless.

Plus, it invited even more inspiration at the end where we see all the children at the zoo wearing their animal inspired costumes and puppets.

My favorite part of the session was when the kids started coming up and identifying which animal they were on the page. Lots of feathery flamingos and peacocks and even an impressively tusked walrus.

Top right is our walrus, left is a gabby flamingo (see the tongue?!) and terrifying snake. Sorry the Pterodactyl is blurry, he was very busy flying.

But we're all about open ended making at the Bubbler and Maker Corps. So why restrict our animals to just those in the book? Especially when the shape of our paper puppet mimicked wings as well as a mouth. Pterodactyls were a natural addition to our menagerie.

This is a puppet of a guy "with really cool hair"

Our simple idea that any piece of paper can become a puppet with some folding (and especially when google eyes, feathers, and scrap paper are provided) was an awesome outlet for not only creativity, but also for play with our kiddos.

In the end, we had several requests for more pieces of paper to make more puppets, which we happy handed out, but we also had one little girl ask for a piece of paper to wrap her puppet up in so she could give it to her little sister as a present. I love the idea that she didn't just create something pretty to go up on a wall, but that she made a toy she could give and use with her sister when she went home.

7/8 Addition! Look what our 2nd and 3rd graders created!