The Stanley Elementary students thought they were simply making puppets from Styrofoam and cloth, but the peacocks, frogs and wolves taught students lasting life skills.
In Room 100, a wood-frame stage with black velvet curtains stood in the center of the room, where students from drama teacher Betsy Czarnowski's fourth-grade class performed for parents and peers.
"Ever since I started teaching drama, which was 1976, there was always an interest in puppets. Especially with students that are quiet, because they could share a lot more," she said. "I think they have to learn to work as a group and that's a big issue."
The process of putting on the show started just after Thanksgiving, according to Czarnowski. The students began to read Aesop's fables.
After that, they began to adapt the stories into scripts, writing their own dialogue. Next they sewed and created their own puppets in art class. Finally, they had to organize parts for the show and memorize lines of script.
"It took us at least two months to do it," said fourth-grader Erica Coates, 10. "I was really nervous before the play because I thought I would mess up, but I didn't."
Czarnowski said she meets with the students for drama class once a week for 55 minutes. She said the puppetry lesson also helped the students develop public speaking skills.
"Most of them are much more willing to do something with a puppet than without it," she said. "They did a much better job than I ever had seen before."
The puppet show included four plays, "Jay and the Peacock," "Dogs and Wolves," "The Frogs Who Wanted a King" and "Belling the Cat."
Charlene Preys, 10, said she enjoyed creating the puppets the most and writing the script the least.
"We got to be creative when we cut things out and put them together," she said."I really didn't like doing the scripts because we had to memorize them."
Lewis Ledesma, 9, also said the most difficult task was memorizing the script.
"Every time we had to do it I kept forgetting some lines," he said. "I think we did pretty well."
Briana Nau said she hoped other students would learn from the lessons their puppet show provided.
"I hope other kids learned a lesson from the frog play," she said. "Be happy with what you get and be happy with what you have."
Jeff Gilbride can be reached at 781-398-8005 or at jgilbrid@cnc.com
