Originally published in TEACH Magazine, January/February 2013 Issue
By Christie Belfiore
The young faces of the children in a Toronto-area Montessori classroom illuminate as their teacher, Carina Cancelli, brings out puppets to help enact the lesson of the day. Simple gestures with her hand bring life to the inert puppets, moving their little arms and mouths to animate a topic.
Easy to operate, the children too can play with the puppets—attributing personalities, characteristics, attitudes, and more. The puppet can become anyone or anything he or she wants. A best friend perhaps. Maybe even a sibling, teacher, or pet. It does not really matter because the world children create with puppets is entirely their own, a world without boundaries that they can freely explore.
