The Puppet As An Educational Value Tool. Paula G. Eleta

But what do we mean today by "family", when it embodies so many "models" and takes on a very complex character?

      The operators of the Early childhood education and care (ECEC) services for children between 0 and 7 years (and not only) must interact daily with very different families, therefore, with different needs and requirements. In fact, we find nuclear, extended, recomposed families, homosexual couples, single-parent families, with adopted children, with foster children, with divorced parents, adolescent and over 40-year-old mothers.

      In order to offer open and inclusive educational places, you must be able to respond to this complexity by activating specific paths as well as adequate operational and relational methods that know how to welcome, understand, communicate, enhance and support the diversities (See Eleta, in collaboration with Iaccarino, 2017).

      Therefore, it is necessary to develop new playful-educational and communicative-relational skills to understand and recognize a plurality of knowledge in children and their families, to co-build a common heritage that is enriched, among other things, by experiences and background, the knowledge and skills of the various players.

      Without an "open" mind (returning to the opening sentence) we couldn’t create, in diversity, a Service meant for all users.

The puppet with his language does not exclude but integrates ...

      Based on our long experience, we are convinced that the puppet (due to its characteristics) can become a tool of high educational value because it is part of the child's natural play environment and meets his needs, allowing the educator to create a stimulating and enriching context and to favor themes connected to the interests of the learners, their family histories, and also to the educational goals.

      In essence, proposing puppets as a valuable tool in the educational field means knowing how to:

      - offer an alternative channel of communication and free expression, creating the conditions to allow children and adults to freely experience this language so that, each in their own way, can discover, structure or integrate different knowledge, skills and aspects of their own personality and history (Cfr. Dolci and Eleta, 2017);

      - promote alternative accesses to knowledge, experience, participation and sharing;

      - create an opportunity for listening and acceptance for all;

      - generate motivating, rewarding and inclusive educational contexts.

What do we mean by "puppet"?

      "The puppet is an instrument of animation theater, that particular theatrical art which, in fact, uses puppets, marionettes, stuffed animals and shadows as the protagonists of the show as signs of a strongly visual and sensorial language... In the animated theater, in addition to puppets, we can therefore understand marionettes, Sicilian puppets but also bare hands.

      Some talented puppeteers manipulate common objects on the stage such as shoes, kitchen utensils, or more. Also, in this case they are puppets because they acquire their theatrical function." (See Dolci and Minoia: 63-84, 2009; See Dolci and Eleta, 2017)

      In the educational field, the choice of one technique rather than another must be evaluated taking into consideration some fundamental variables such as familiarity with the language and the tool to be animated, the goal to be achieved, the age of the group, the available space, the most suitable stimuli for that group of children, etc.

      However, due to its simplicity and its expressive immediacy, the technique that has become more widespread in education is undoubtedly that of the glove puppet inside which the animator sticks his hand. "(Cfr. Dolci and Eleta, 2017)