10/4/14

Coming to Life!

I bought a puppet last week.

Though I grew up loving the Muppet Show, I never thought about actually operating puppets myself.  Sure, there was that one time in Croatia where I did a puppet show at an orphanage with a friend but that was an isolated incident.

Until now.

After discussions on new ways to capture the little kids' attention at church, we decided to give a puppet a try.

I brought home the puppet (the one in the picture) and began looking for a voice. My four-year-old sat with me and kept weighing in on the various voices.  He made for a tough audience and shot down nearly every voice I came up with. I finally found one to his liking, and that's when "Hank" came to life.

As soon as Hank started talking, my son completely ignored me and began talking to the puppet.  He asked lots of questions, told him stories, and made it clear that Dad was just an appendage on the end of the puppet's body.  After a time of interaction and engagement I said that Hank needed to go to sleep, at which point my son began talking to me again!

This morning I began discussing how to use the puppet at church.  I wanted to talk about fear and mentioned how it would be good to have Hank learn a verse about fear.  Immediately, my four-year-old piped up and said, How about "Do not fear, for the Lord is with you?"

Recognizing the paraphrase of Joshua 1:9, I was excited that my son was able to recall a Bible verse applicable to fear and was able to use it appropriately. He will now teach Hank that verse in church this week.

Maybe this puppet thing won't be so bad after all!

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