Learning at His Feet: Puppetools

Saturday, December 20, 2008

Puppetools

As a member of the TOS Homeschool Crew, I have been given the wonderful opportunity to review many homeschool products over the next several months. I feel truly blessed to be participating in this review group and I'm looking forward to trying out the products and giving you my honest opinion.

I would definitely not describe myself as a playful mom...quirky maybe, but not playful. I wish I could tell you that we have family game nights and that I'm constantly incorporating new and fun ways of learning into our homeschool. But the most I can give you is that I occasionally do these things.

So if you're playfully challenged like me perhaps you would be interested in a website called Puppetools. This site is all about teaching by playing...playing with puppets that is.

"A playful quality of mind will help your child self-start, be self-expressive, creative-minded, and self-confident. A child nurtured through play is more receptive to learning and more able to absorb the jolts and challenges of factory education." -Jeff Peyton

Jeff Peyton is the passionate creator of Puppetools and has invested much time and energy into the research and writing of "The Language of Play". You will find that the meat of his website is this information in order to make you "a more effective and knowledgeable 'play teacher' to your child."

To put things into perspective, purchasing a subscription to the Puppetools website is very much like buying a very thorough book about using puppets to teach. You'll also find instructions on how to make Peyton's own "Hinge" fold - the basic fold for beginning all your puppets, 37 puppet patterns, parent forums, and tons of pictures of students and teacher's puppet examples to get your creative juices flowing.

You can subscribe to the site in two ways.

1) $20.00 TRIAL SUBSCRIPTION: Designed for INDIVIDUAL USERS who just want to take a closer look. INDIVIDUAL TRIAL SUBSCRIBERS GET COMPLETE ACCESS TO ALL RESOURCES FOR A FULL 60-DAYS.

2) $99.00 REGULAR SUBSCRIPTION (up to 30 users) Designed for small & large GROUPS such as families, home schoolers, classrooms, scout troops, 4-H, entire schools, and non-profit organizations with educational missions.

Unfortunately, I have to admit the site is rather difficult to navigate and the information sometimes feels a little monotonous and...well, boring. Not exactly what you would expect on a website dedicated to play. Nevertheless, I would certainly pay $20 for a book that included this information (and the patterns and picture examples) and you shouldn't need more than 60 days to gather information and examples from Puppetools. Plus, if you could get 30 families from your homeschool co-op to go in on a yearly group subscription that would be even better (bringing the cost down to only $3.30 per family!)

The kids really did have fun making and playing with their puppets and I'm looking forward to incorporating them into their other subjects. I wanted to show you some of the puppets we made using the Puppetools patterns: