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Puppets - A Great Addition to Everyday Teaching
Vida Zuljevic
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Working as a kindergarten teacher in the former Yugoslavia, my country of origin, I used puppets as a teaching tool to introduce works of literature or math concepts, to talk about faraway places or music from different cultures, to introduce the seasons, to deal with conflicts that would occasionally arise, and for countless other purposes.
Through these lessons and activities, I tried to develop children's appreciation for literature, their creative thinking and expressiveness, and a sense for characters, places, and time. I also sought to develop their ability to make connections between different subject areas, and to develop other important skills that young children need in order to succeed in their future schooling and in life in general. Besides developing academic skills, my goal always was to help children become self-confident and develop their social interactive skills, and also to help them express their fears and frustrations in an appropriate manner.
Forced by war to flee from our country, my family and I lived in refugee camps in several different places, and I dealt with the wounds - both emotional and physical - inflicted by war on children, including my own. I continued to make puppets and produce puppet plays involving children, thus helping them to concentrate on something productive, helping them to release their traumas and to overcome the stress caused by war. The puppets proved to be powerful tools.
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Puppets - A Great Addition to Everyday Teaching