Students at St. John of The Cross in Western Springs have been working for three months on their sixth-grade puppet and skit project, a 25-year tradition for the school, said teacher Antonia Adducci.
Art teacher Guy Casper said students began the project in art class in November by picking at animal to create, and then continued to work in steps to create their puppets. He said the theme of the puppet show, We Are One Body, always correlates with the theme of the school year.
“Puppets are awesome and the kids enjoy learning how to handle them, how to make them move and how to use them in the skits they create,” Casper said.
The students create puppets in art class and work on skits in the learning resource center.
“We had four themes and put the students into four groups,” Adducci said. “They pulled a theme out of a hat and together created a skit to show how people can work together in a catastrophe.”
Adducci has strict rules on how the skits are written.
“The skits must be cute, make sense and be relevant to the theme,” she said.
She also said each skit must have the same number of lines for each character, so all students get an equal chance to perform.
More Top Picks Best Steam Irons
“I also tell them to know their audience, and we don’t allow puppets bumping heads or anything that doesn’t demonstrate working together,” she said.
The students performed the puppet show and skit Friday for classes and any parents or grandparents who wanted to visit.
“I liked how we could use different materials to make our puppets, it was fun putting the different layers together,” said sixth-grader Will Turcich.
The themes chosen for the four performances were Tsunami, Hurricane, Syndrome to spread (medical) and the Great Drought. Adducci started by asking the student audience if they knew what a catastrophe was and if they understood the different themes for the show.
The first student group talked about a tsunami and how a community could help out their friends who have been flooded out to find shelter. The second group performed a skit about a zoo facing a hurricane and a shortage of food.
The third group talked about a medical catastrophe and ways to donate money to buy medicine. The last group talked about a great drought and how teamwork is the key to gathering food and drink.
All of the performances ended with the puppets dancing to a song chosen by the student groups including “Celebrate,” “We are Family” and “September.”
Each student participating chose a different animal to make.
“I liked making my giraffe puppet because he has different spots and different colors in between.” said student Sabrina Miller.
“I picked an elephant to make because it has a lot of fun features and it was fun putting on the ears. I also like hearing the little kids having fun.” said Maggie Olk.
“I picked the rhino because it was my favorite animal,” said Mateo May. “I really liked writing the skit too, because everyone had an equal number of lines.”
The sixth-grade puppet show is part of the Catholic Schools Week which officially runs Jan. 28 through Feb. 2 this year.
Diane Dachota is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.