The Star Apple: A Puppet-Play Story

In searching out tales for puppet shows, I was drawn to The Story of the Root Children, not only because it's a beautiful depiction of the season's cycles, but also because of the presence of mother & child archetypes.  I felt that puppets created in the images of these archetypes would make versatile players for many & various stories.

Another story which I thought could be played nicely with a pair of mother & child puppets is known as The Little Red House with No Doors and No Windows and a Star Inside.  It is also sometimes referred to as The Star Apple.  I first encountered The Star Apple in a book called Healing Stories for Challenging Behavior written by Susan Perrow (published by Hawthorn Press.)  I highly recommend this book, not only as a source for many good stories, but also because the book discusses how to guide children through difficult situations using stories (The Star Apple story appears in the section for stories when a child is feeling bored or whiny); in addition to this, the book offers guidance in creating original stories for individual children according to their needs.

Now, on to The Star Apple!  It is usual for this story to start out with a child and his mother.  Other characters the child encounters include a little girl, a farmer, an auntie or grandmother and the wind.  Not having puppets on hand at the moment to play a little girl, a farmer or an additional mother/grandmother, I have simply substituted a little bird in my version.  This is the beauty of stories... they can often be adapted to suit your situation.  Here is a link via Mommy Nature.com to a version of the original story; for your own use, feel free to adapt the story, or use it as written!

The Star Apple 

(my own adapted version)

There was once a little boy, about the same age as you, in fact.  One afternoon, he grew tired of looking at his favorite book, playing with all his toys, and drawing pictures, so he went to his mama and asked, "What shall I do now?"  His mama replied, "Why don't you go on an adventure?  You can search for a little red house with no windows and no doors and a star hiding inside.  When you find it, please carry it gently home to me."  The little boy looked back at his mama with confusion and curiosity.  "Where can I find such a house?"  he asked. His mama pointed out the window and suggested he start his search by skip-hopping across the field and up the hill.

Off he went skip-hopping across the field, until, distracted by a pretty little bird perched on the branch of a gorse bush, he paused to say hello.  "Good afternoon, little bird," he said.  "Can you tell me where I might find a little red house with no windows and no doors and a star hiding inside?"  "Indeed," replied the little bird, "I don't think I've ever seen such a house, though it sounds awfully nice.  Perhaps you should ask the wind.  The wind blows everywhere.  It sees and knows everything, so surely the wind would know where to find such a house."  Then the little bird picked up a tiny twig in her beak and fluttered off to add the twig to her nest.  "Goodbye little bird, and thank you," called the boy as she flew away.

Standing next to the gorse bush in the middle of the field, the little boy wondered how to find the wind. He decided to start by calling it; so, he pointed his face up to the sky and called in a very loud voice, "Wind!  Wind!  I need to talk to you!"  A moment later he felt a brush across his cheek and a mischievous, invisible hand pulling at his cap as if to steal it away.  The boy laughed and held onto his hat for he knew the wind had heard his call.  "Wind!" he cried, "Do you know where I can find a little red house with no windows and no doors and a star hiding inside?  Next he felt the wind whoosh around him, push gently at his back and then rush forward toward the hill at the end of the field.  The little boy ran as fast as he could, keeping pace with the wind, to the end of the field.  Together he and the wind rushed up the hill, and at the top of the hill was a tree. 

The wind swirled through the branches of the tree, and plop! Down fell a beautiful, red apple, right at the feet of the little boy.  "Oh!" said the little boy excitedly, "A little red house with no windows and no doors, but where is the star?"  He gently lifted the apple in his hands and called to the wind as it rushed away towards the sea, "Thank you, dear wind!  Thank you very much!"

Carefully, the little boy carried the apple back down the hill, across the field and into the house where his mama was waiting for him.  "Look mama, look!"  he cried, "I have found a little red house with no windows and no doors, but I cannot see a star inside."  His mama cut open the apple from side to side, and there they found the star.  I can see it.  Can you see it, too?

This is only one story I found which would be nice for telling with puppets of mother & child.  Can you think of any others?  What stories would you tell? 

Paper Puppets for Toddler-Play

Yesterday morning I posted this tutorial for paper puppets, 

and then my wee Bloom got a-hold of the little birdie marionette...

Together, he and that little bird had a lot of fun...  

Fly little birdie, fly!

A Puppet Tutorial for Children: Bird, Butterfly & Ladybird, too

The materials for these puppets are very basic, and if you don't have these items lying around the house, you should easily be able to purchase them at a local shop.  Feel free to copy the shapes I've used and have your children decorate them, come up with your own designs, or better yet, have your children draw bird, butterfly and ladybug shapes which can then be turned into puppets.  You will notice below that my resident nine-year-old was not the least bit interested in making puppets (he was too busy reading the graphic novel version of The Amulet of Samarkand); however, once I finished creating the puppets, he was quite interested in playing with them!
Materials:
Colorful Craft Paper or white Card-stock (which can be decorated)White Craft Glue
A Glue-Stick
Clear Sticky-Tape
Scissors
Colored Marking Pens, crayons, glitter, etc...
Long Bamboo Skewers (for making Rod-Puppets)
Popsicle Sticks (if you are planning to make marionettes)
Needle and Thread (for making marionettes)

To start off, I used white-glue to attach two popsicle-sticks into a 'T' shape.  While the glue was drying, I cut out bird-shaped silhouettes and some simple shapes for wings.  To prepare the wings for gluing, I made small folds along edges where the wings will be attached to the birds (see photo above.)

Next, I glued the wings onto the bird-silhouettes and allowed the glue to dry for a few minutes (if your children are impatient, you can always use sticky-tape to attach the wings.)  Once the wings were firmly attached, I threaded a needle, poked it through the top of the head, tied a knot and then repeated the process farther down the back of the bird.  (Note: For maneuverability and stability it is important to suspend your marionette from two points. Suspending these small puppets from the head and farther down along the back works very well. Another option is to suspend them from a point on each of the wings, however they will be more difficult to balance and will tend to wobble either beak-down or tail-down.)

After I had attached thread to the bird at two points (the head and the back), I tied the other ends of the threads to a popsicle-stick 'T.'  The little bird was now ready for it's first flight!

To turn the other little bird into a rod-puppet, I used a bit of sticky-tape to attach it to the top of a bamboo skewer.  Now this little bird was ready for flight, too!

To create a ladybird rod-puppet, I cut a body and head from black paper and a set of wings from red paper (though, one shape could just as easily have been cut from one piece of paper -- the head would then be colored with the same black marking pen used to make the dots on the wings.)

I used a glue-stick to attach the wings to the head/body and then used sticky-tape to affix my ladybird to a bamboo-skewer... Done!

To make a butterfly puppet I cut wings from bright paper and a body from black.  Then I glued the body to the wings, used tape to attach a bamboo-skewer and, voila!  I had also intended to create a butterfly marionette, but more pressing matters took precedence. It was not time fuss with a few more bits of string -- it was time to play!

It's a Big World, Baby

How much do I love this little video?  A whole lot!  I hope you love it, too...

Made by Joel: Paper Bird Mobile

 Love this! You can find the template here...

Birdie-Love

 For my birdie-loving-babe I stitched this little bird...

Littlest Bird Watcher

From the moment he wakes up in the morning, my littlest bird-lover is chirping "bur-dee!"  He points to the fluttering paper birds hanging from our mobiles, and when I take him to watch the chickadees, titmice, goldfinches and pine siskins at the feeder outside the bedroom window, he chirps even louder... which, unfortunately, frightens away the birds.

And his favorite song at the moment?  Little Bird by Elizabeth Mitchell, of course!

A Paper Theater

What did I do yesterday?  I spent the day creating a paper theater at a class taught by the the marvelous Ulla Milbrath at Castle in the Air.

My paper theater was created from a plain, square box swathed in blue metallic crepe paper, and the children riding the dove were cut from a book called Featherlight by Gabriele Eichenauer... (Cutting up a book? Oh, horror, but Ulla insisted...)  You cannot see it in this photo, but there is a little knob at the bottom which can make the dove fly up & down, side to side.

The scene is topped by a glowing golden moon gazing down fondly over the children...

Nearer and nearer the dove came until at last it alighted beside him.  "Croo, croo," cooed the dove.

-- Gabriele Eichenauer (Featherlight)

Hope is the Thing With Feathers

The other day I was browsing through a craft store and spotted a little dove-shaped craft punch (in case you go looking for one, it's produced as part of the Martha Stewart Craft line.)  I decided to splurge because I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it...

 I broke out the Mod-Podge and went rummaging around under the kitchen sink for some empty jam jars...

 Then I painted the sides of the jars with Mod-Podge and covered them with paper (I used German Kite Paper for the white lantern and gift-wrap tissue paper for the light blue one...)

 The doves are punched from thin card-stock and the hearts are cut from kite paper.

To apply the doves & hearts, I painted a small area with Mod-Podge and, while it was still wet, I placed the doves & hearts on top. Then, just to make sure everything was stuck in place, I went over the doves & hearts again with more Mod-Podge.  It looked like a disaster when it was wet, but after the Mod-Podge had dried... perfect...

 Doesn't it look lovely with a candle inside?

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm. 

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me. 

 

-- Emily Dickinson

Pincushion of my Dreams

When Kristin of the blog Kleas invited me to swap pincushions, I set it aside in my mind, thinking, "I've never made a pincushion... what do I know about pincushions?"  But I thought about it a bit and day-dreamed about it a bit. And, the more I thought about it and day-dreamed about it, the more I warmed to the idea.  A few weeks ago I emailed her and said, "Okay, you're on... let's swap!"

And so I came up with this wee mama bird on her wee nest of eggs...  She is very patient, but soon they will hatch and she will have three little nestlings, as feathery and pink as she is, herself...

Sweet mama bird, oh, little bird of my dreams...

P.S.  My almost-eight-year-old loves this pincushion so much that he asked me to make one for him, too.  When I asked him what he planned to do with it, and he responded that when he gets married he wants to give it as a gift to his wife.  I suggested he sew his own, and so he has stitched up his very first little sewing project... a tiny bright-pink bird with red feathers. It's very sweet... (photos will follow.)

P.P.S.  His other comment about this pincushion was that the bird is very beautiful but not as beautiful as real birds because "they are in nature and God made them."

On the Wings of Spring: Confections of Pink and Lavender

And, by a most secret method, he can make lovely blue birds' eggs with black spots on them, and when you put one of these in your mouth, it gradually gets smaller and smaller until suddenly there is nothing left except a tiny little pink sugary baby bird sitting on the tip of your tongue.

--From Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl

Thinking about what to create for my swap-partners for the little birdie swap, I was inspired by the above quote by Roald Dahl from his book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I asked myself, “What would a bird look like if she were created by a master-confectioner?” I also tried to imagine what kind of bird would lay a magical egg which would hatch a pink, sugary baby bird. So, I created magical mama-birds. They lays  lovely blue eggs (with black spots on them), and from their eggs hatch little pink sugary baby birds…
 

I started with a sketch and a sample pattern...

Then stitched up a little birdie and added some feathers. Note: If you want to give this a try for yourself, please take my word for it, do NOT bother attempting to sew on feathers... what a mess. Go right for your bottle of Aleene's Tacky Glue and don't give it another thought.

And after stitching up one little birdie, I made another...

Here they are together...

Sugary, pink, delectable confections...

Wishing you endless sugary pink delight!

Blue Bird Blessings

Why, that's the blue bird we were looking for! ...We went so far and he was here all the time! ...Oh, but it's wonderful!

From The Blue Bird by Maurice Maeterlinck

When I was about 5 or 6 my mother took me to a screening of the 1940 movie The Bluebird starring Shirley Temple, based on the 1908 play by Maurice Maeterlinck. The story is about a brother & sister, Tyltyl and Mytyl, who are sent out by the fairy Berylune into various magical realms to search for the Bluebird of Happiness. Returning home empty-handed, the children see that the bird has been in a cage in their home the whole time. When Tyltyl gives the bird as a gift to a neighbor's sick child, the bird flies away. The moral is that, ultimately, happiness can only be found within oneself. With this beautiful story in mind, I dreamt up this little mobile project...

To start off, I used watercolors to paint a wash of blue on heavy-weight watercolor paper. I also flecked some brown paint onto one of my painted sheets so I could cut out speckled eggs,  To make the speckles, grab an old toothbrush, dip the bristles in brown paint and then run a toothpick over the bristles -- tiny flecks of paint will go everywhere, so be prepared! Once the paint was dry, I ironed the paper and then placed it beneath a pile of heavy books for a few hours to smooth and flatten it.

Next, I drew outlines of my birds (and eggs) on the back of the painted paper,

And carefully cut them out.

Added feathers & punched holes for hanging...

Then strung it all together with an egg in the middle & a feather on the end. To finish things up, I inscribed a message on the backs of my birds.

They say, "May you always find the blue bird of happiness in your home and in your heart..."

What messages will your blue birds bring?