"Puppet Play" project @ HSC Bensonhurst Senior Center.5 9/02/2021

 

HSC Bensonhurst Senior Center

Puppet Project

Blog 5 9/02/2021

Warming up our fingers and wrists is important for puppeteers as these muscles are used a lot, especially when manipulating finger puppets. We started with the shakedown countdown, followed by a hand massage, then wrist stretches and rotations and finished up with finger exercises. Students were keen to display their animal heads and excited to complete the facial features.

They used colored tissue paper to add features, such as inside the ears, or horns, nose, eyes, mouth, teeth etc. We emphasized the importance of checking the placement of the eyes so that the puppet, when turned to the audience, appears to be looking at them. Music played while they focused on making their animal head unique. Pun’s pink rabbit featured a large brown stripe down the center of its head, big eyes and two giant buck teeth. Ru Ping made two animal heads, a white rabbit, with a green nose and matching green inside its ears and a brown horse white a white nose. Lao Yu’s dappled cow featured one black eye and one white and wonderful pink nostrils. Her creation reminded us of Picasso! Jing Wei’s impressive orange tiger with black stripes, has a yellow nose and matching yellow almond shaped eyes outlined in black. So Sim’s highlighted her orange rabbit in pink adding a small button brown nose. Sook Fong also made an orange rabbit but chose a pink stripe to highlight the inside of its ears, and green around its facial pouches. Stella’s orange pig has a pink snout and small brown eyes centered inside pink.

All our seniors are adept seamstresses so making their animal’s costume was not a problem. They used the pattern to cut out the dress and then hand sewed the seams leaving openings for the neck and the two hands. 

Next week, they will add adornments to their costume and make the puppet’s hands. It’s slowly coming alive!!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

PUBLIC CELEBRATION of ART & PERFORMANCE from the students of SELFHELP LATIMER GARDENS OAC & NEWTOWN ITALIAN SENIOR CITIZEN CENTER At FLUSHING TOWN HALL Friday June 9, 2023

  PUBLIC CELEBRATION of ART & PERFORMANCE  from the students of SELFHELP LATIMER GARDENS OAC & NEWTOWN ITALIAN SENIOR CITIZEN CENTER At FLUSHING TOWN HALL Friday June 9, 2023 Spica, Margaret, and I were excited to see our students all together at Flushing Town Hall eager to perform their shadow puppet stories. Gabrielle M. Hamilton, Director of Education & Public Programs and Joanne Lee, Education & Family Programs Administrator at Flushing Town Hall welcomed us and helped set up the performance space, with assistance from their staff. Thank you very much for making it all seamless!    Esther, Program Assistant at Newtown Italian Senior Citizen Center brought our students via a chartered bus, some of whom had never been to Flushing before. Our students from Selfhelp Latimer Gardens OAC walked over, accompanied by the Director, Helen Yang and Miranda, the Case Worker there. We welcome their support and encouragement. It was also exciting for the partic...
Read more

Family Album Pop-Up Bookmaking.3 @ Queens Library 4/25/2023

                                                                   QUEENS PUBLIC LIBRARY "Creative Aging: Virtual Family Album Pop-Up Bookmaking" Tuesday April 25, 2023 This was our 3rd class, and it was great to see a lot of familiar faces. Sonia continues to inspire us with the pages she made during the week. She shared her pop-up home page which featured her apartment building and church. In the front she added footsteps to mark her path to and from her home.    The warmup asked participants to close their eyes and imagine what they might see outside their window. Upon opening their eyes, they showed an expression on their face and in their body, which demonstrated to others what they saw, such as fear, disgust, surprise, happiness and welcoming.   I shared my pop-up windo...
Read more

HSC Bensonhurst Senior Center HOME Project.13 11/04/2021

Image
  HSC Bensonhurst Senior Center HOME Project Blog 13 11/04/2021 It’s all about balance! We are constructing our home mobile so to warm up our minds and bodies we began with some more balancing exercises. These are important to incorporate in your daily exercise as they help develop core strength and balance. We stood tall with our hands on hips and slowly rotated our body, drawing out 10 circles with our upper body. Then we stood on one leg while we threw punches across our body alternating between the left and right arms. Finally, we marched on the spot, lifting our knees to hip level while simultaneously swinging alternate arms. This is a good aerobic workout. Sharing is integral to all our classes and our seniors showed us their houses. Simply beautiful! They added windows and decorated the door, personalizing it with the house number, then added a roof, experimenting with a round one. So Sim cleverly used recycled plastic to create vertical blinds. A small hole was pierced thro...
Read more