"Puppet Play" project @ HSC Bensonhurst Senior Center.6 9/16/2021

 

HSC Bensonhurst Senior Center

Puppet Project

Blog 6 9/16/2021

It was great to be back and see our students' smiling faces. Homecrest is celebrating the Moon Festival after our class and our students have received moon cakes from the center. Delicious!

We warmed up with a few more hand exercises to help with dexterity and hand eye coordination. We asked each person to share their animal puppet with the class and encouraged suggestions about what kind of character it could be, either make or female, young or old and ideas for a name.

Our students finished making the basic animal puppet costume in our last session, although some went so far as to add some trimmings for homework!  Pun made a delightful yellow dog puppet with big black floppy ears and a pink tongue sticking out of its mouth. She added a big black and red striped bow tie to its costume and added lace trim around the neck and wrists. She also made a pink bunny and gave it a matching pink costume, to which she added a blue pocket for it to keep its carrots. She made a carrot too and placed it in the pocket. Our students felt both puppets would become firm friends. Jing Wei’s striped, orange tiger was definitely female according to the class and full of love. She made a brown costume trimmed with lace and added two little buttons to set it off. More lace was added on the cuffs and neck. 

Ru Ping also made two puppets, a brown horse with a white snout and a white rabbit with puffy cheeks and a giant red smiling mouth. For the horse she made a matching brown costume set off with a center tie of lace and two buttons, and lace on the cuffs. Sook Fong’s orange rabbit has a patch of green around its mouth. She dressed it in a purple costume, added a large white flower and sewed lace around the cuffs. 

Hui Fen’s orange tiger with brown stripes was a grandpa according to the class, perhaps because of the long teeth or whiskers she added below its mouth. She dressed it in a brown costume, which she brightened with a pink central tie set off with two silver buttons and lace trim on the cuffs. Lao Yu made a brown costume for her multi-colored ox, with white splotches on its face. So Sim enhanced her charming pink rabbit by adding eyes she found in a magazine, making the puppet come alive. She made 3 sets of clothes for it! Stella and her grandson Diego entertained us with the two animal puppets she made, a billy goat and a pig, the latter perhaps in honor of Diego as he was born in the Year of the Pig. She created big eyes for the pig, which she set on top of its head, and everyone agreed she was Miss Piggy. Even though she added a beard to the billy goat, everyone agreed it had a young face and was called Mr. Goat. 

Students used the pattern to cut out the hands for their animal puppet and sewed them into place adding a button in the center. Next week we will complete the puppet and have some fun bringing it to life.

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