How to Use Sock Puppets to Teach Languages
Sock puppets are made by sticking your hand into a clean sock and then folding the fabric between your thumb and your fingers so that it looks like a talking mouth. Eyes can be drawn directly onto the sock using a marker or a whole face can be created by gluing or sewing bits and pieces of fabric, buttons, felt, beads and found objects to the sock. You can use a clean sock that has lost its mate. Teaching children using puppets has a long history of success, since children often find puppets interesting and fun to listen to.
Things You'll Need
- Clean socks
- Markers
- Scissors
- Glue
- Buttons (optional)
- Felt (optional)
- Beads (optional)
- Found objects (optional)
Instructions
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Make sock puppets as a simple class project. Allow each student to create the style, gender and decorations on their puppet that are satisfying for them. This will help the child form a bond with their puppet.
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Tell students that their puppets only speak the foreign language. Have students sit in a large circle with their puppets on their hands.
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Pair students and have them speak to each other, through their puppets, in the chosen foreign language.
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Move around the circle to make sure that every child is participating in the fun.
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Establish a reward system that will allow each student to award their puppet with a special decoration for successful words or phrases.
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Do a call-and-response session by calling out a word or phrase in English and have the puppets answer as a group in the foreign language.
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Make the puppets special by having them "wake up" at the beginning of foreign language class as each child takes his puppet out of a bin. Finish the class with a departing greeting as each puppet is put away till the next class.
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Tips & Warnings
Ask the students what kind of phrases they would need to know in a foreign country. Add new phrases that are suggested.
