2nd CLASS: The importance of puppets in EDUCATION

PUPPETRY

Puppetry is an old, traditional art, which is still active in almost every culture, used in many different contexts, for spiritual, cultural and educational teaching. As puppetry is primarily a visual art, it can communicate to people who are not literate or who do not understand spoken language and it has been used in this way for thousands of years. In class. 

I have learned that there are many ways to prepare the primary classes with puppetry. There are three techniques of preparing puppets:

1. Papier - marché: is a composite material consisting of paper pieces, sometimes reinforced with textiles, bound with an adhesive, such as glue, starch or in this case with wallpaper paste. 

and the result is... 

  2. Clay (dictation): is a technique to do in class very effective for pupils can open their mind while they make forms with the clay. The other afternoon Elixabet and I did a lot of forms in our students residence. It´s really funny!!

  3. Shadow puppetry: is an ancient form of storytelling and entertaiment which uses flat articulated figures to create the impression of moving humans and other three dimensional  objects. 

Giants and big heads in Toledo (Spain)

    Giants and big heads are a popular tradition in the festivals held of Toledo. The tradition is to make certain figures parading dancing and cheering, giants, or chasing people who come to the celebration, bigheaded.

     The giants are figures of several meters carried by a person. The carrier spins and giant dancing to the sound of popular music band. Generally giants giant parade in pairs and giantess. The most common is that the figures represent archetypes popular or important historical figures of Toledo, like in the video.

I let my imagination fly with art...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeSZeaeuShw&feature=youtu.be

1st CLASS: He was a poor little mysterious being, like everyone else ...

BLUE BIRD

Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck was a Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist who wrote in French. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911. The main themes in his work are death and the meaning of life. Among Maeterlinkck´s most famous plays is the Blue Bird (1908), a fairy tale with the theme of the search of happiness. Also, the Blue Bird is a 1940 American fantasy film directed by Walter Lang. The screenplay by Walter Bullock was adapted from the 1908 play of the same name by Maurice Maeterlinck. It was filmed in Technicolor and tells the story of a disagreeable little girl and her search for happiness.

But ... What happens next?

Once upon a time, two little boys in Gent. They are very poor and they are hungry. One day they saw a blue bird in the sky... 

But, they can´t see it when the blue bird was so far... so, they think that they should search the blue bird because when they saw it they felt different. 

They walk a lot for a way... 

Suddenly, it start to snow... 

For this reason, they think they might do then is to climb to the trees... to avoid the snow!

The snow stop to fell down. They continued to search the blue bird. After walk a little bit, they can saw the footprints. They follow them to find it. 

They were very tired... all day they had been walked to find the blue bird... They were really hungry! 

They saw something silver in the glass and they caught it. It was a gun and a sword!!

When they had this in their hands, they thought it was a sign. Suddenly, they returned to see the blue bird and they thought they should kill him to eat because maybe gave them vitamins good for all their life.

In search of happiness... 

Just a coffee in good company for me means happiness, regardless where you take it.

TOLEDO

I am from SPAIN but inside of it you can found my city. I live in a small village of Toledo calls Mazarambroz, but I study in Toledo. I really love to walk in the narrow streets in Toledo because it´s very beautiful... It´s like a FAIRY TALE where inhabitants are trolls, princess, kings, fairy, ogres, dwarves... If you go there you feel delighted by the magic it contains. 

And now... another way to feel the happiness!

FELICIDAD SONG!! 

Happiness!! You have a pretty name... Happiness!! I don't know where are you...