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My kids LOVE Mo Willems books. They laugh so hard and so loudly at the characters. The books are hilarious! We started with Don’t Let The Pigeon Drive The Bus and then we got Today I Will Fly.
One of the things the kids love to do is to read along with me, acting out each part. Since we made an awesome puppet theater a couple of weeks ago, I thought it would be a good idea to use some of the Mo Willems characters in a puppet show.
I got some pictures of the characters. I found an adorable printable from Lalymom for the cookies from The Pigeon Gets a Cookie?! They all looked great! We re-read both Mo Willems books that we had at home. Then I thought, they’re totally going to want to do the puppet show. I. Was. Wrong.
What happened instead?
They made up a song starting with the line “Pigeon at the wheel!”
They started creating a show with singing. No puppet theater involved.
Singing and gymnastics.
They weren’t interested in playing with the puppet theater at all.
I left the puppet theater out for a couple of days with all of the characters nearby. A few days later, after dinner, the kids go into the living room and start playing. They come back a few minutes later and tell us that it’s time for the show. There are two chairs set up. The whole puppet theater is arranged and the show begins. My son operates my phone flashlight like a spotlight and my daughter proceeds to put on 3 short stories.
The social skills Connection
It’s OKAY if they don’t play the way you expect when you set out toys. Sometimes I come up with what I think are great plans for an activity I think the kids will love. I set it all up, then it goes in a completely different direction.
And I let them lead the way. This is respecting their wants. They have some control and can make their own decisions about what they want to play and when they want to play it.
Plus, this allows for me to see their creativity while playing. They tend to do things differently than I expect and it’s so wonderful to just let them use their imagination and see what happens.
