Making Marionettes

Rod puppets – easy. Shadow puppets – easy. Marionettes – tricky, tricky, tricky. First up there are the limbs to cut. Each puppet needs eight limbs, so with thirty puppets – 240 limbs. A visit to Bunnings and I’m the happy owner of ten 1m lengths of dowel (which is cheaper if you buy the

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Choice

  Choice was one of the first apps I ever downloaded for my iPhone and for a free app, it’s certainly been one of the most useful. Operation is simple; up to five people place a finger each on the screen. Grey dots form under their fingertips. the dots flash on and off then just

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iPads in School Productions

Warner Crocker is the Artistic Director at Wayside Theatre in Virginia, USA. His article (below) discussed how his theatre’s policy on the use of phones and other ‘gadgets’ had changed as both backstage and front-of-house crew found themselves using the devices to streamline their jobs. The iPad was certainly an indispensable part of our last

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R-7 Drama Targets

The Utah State Office of Education has some excellent Drama and Music curriculum documents. A few years ago I found their ‘Drama Target’ sheets (apparently no longer available) which featured simplified versions of their Drama outcomes, organised for recording students achievement and progress. These impressed me so much I made my own versions using outcomes

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Safari Finger Puppets

These little creatures caught my eye in the Adelaide Airport today. A bit(!) pricey at AUD $10 for just four cardboard puppets but I figured my Year 6 students can reverse engineer them and make their own. The fact they’re made from cardboard rather than cloth or foam is very clever and the movement mechanism

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Story Sections Posters

This set of three posters outlines the three basic sections of a story: Orientation, Complication and Resolution. Each poster has a scout / camping themed picture, the title in large red letters and features a simpler title in blue and components of the section in black. Orientation (beginning): ‘Scene, setting, situation, characters’. Complication (middle): ‘Problem,

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Dramatic Music App (Ta Da!)

Dramatic Music App is a bright, colourful and easy-to-use soundboard, just perfect for the Drama classroom and a steal (cue ‘suspense’) at just $0.99 It features four main screens with speech-bubble shaped buttons that activate a comprehensive range of usefully dramatic music. The music is high quality (and sounds even better through a decent set

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