These three puppet plays provide a creative way to teach students about gratitude, honesty, and creativity. Being thankful, being honest, and being creative are all necessary life skills for kids as well as adults. These aspects of wellness also improve mood and help build better relationships with people. These playful puppet shows can be performed by elementary children or by older students performing for younger audiences.
About the playwright:
Liz Farney Maxson has been a high school English teacher, dance teacher, and drama director for over twenty years. She has degrees in dance, creative writing, and education. She teaches grades 9- 2 in Ohio and directs theater for her high school and local community theaters. In her spare time, she teaches dance and performs. She is excited to write for Drama Notebook as she loves to use the scenes and plays on Drama Notebook with her students.
Excerpt from the plays:
No. Thank You!
A Puppet Play About Gratitude
CHARACTERS:
3 Student-Age Puppets (any gender/creature) and
1 Adult Puppet (any gender/creature)
PUPPET 1
PUPPET 2
PUPPET 3
ADULT PUPPET
SETTING: Puppet Theater or a Classroom
(Three students have been asked a very important question, and they are trying to decide on the best answer to share for the class discussion.)
(All puppets enter. The students are chatting. These conversations can be ad-libbed, preferably with the names of people and places in your school or community. The puppets can be at varying levels or all on the same level.)
ADULT PUPPET: Ok, class. Settle down. (Beat.) Are we ready to begin? Great! The question we are going to talk about today is, “What are you most grateful for?” You and your group have ten minutes to decide what you are most grateful for. Be sure to elect a spokesperson to report your group’s answer back to the class. Your time starts now.
(ADULT PUPPET leaves.)
PUPPET 1: This is like the easiest question in the world. I have so many answers for this.
PUPPET 2: Me too. I can think of seven things I’m grateful for right now. Let’s see. There’s toilet paper, gummy bears, my Nintendo Switch, recess, and potato chips but only the BBQ kind, my family, you guys…
(PUPPET 3 looks down and sighs softly.)
PUPPET 1: Dude. That’s eight things.
PUPPET 2: I told you I was grateful.
PUPPET 1: At Thanksgiving this year, my little sister said she was grateful for glitter. She said the world is lucky to have it because it makes everything sparkle a little bit more.
(PUPPETS 1 & 2 laugh lightly.)
(PUPPET 3 looks down and sighs softly again.)
PUPPET 2: Hey. Why do you look so sad?
PUPPET 3: I don’t like this question.
(PUPPET 3 looks down and sighs softly one more time.)
PUPPET 1: What do you mean you don’t like this question? It is so easy to answer.
PUPPET 2: I just did it in like ten seconds. That means we still have like seven minutes left to compare our answers and pick one.
PUPPET 3: That’s just it. I don’t want to pick just one. In fact, I don’t think I can pick just one. I am grateful for my family…
PUPPET 2: Me too.
PUPPET 3: And my friends…
PUPPET 2: I said that too. See? We are totally in sync with each other.
PUPPET 3: What about my dogs? What about world peace? What about not being hungry? Those are all really important to me, too. I can’t just choose one to be my favorite.
PUPPET 1: I hadn’t thought about that. You’re right. All of those are really good things to be grateful for, and they deserve all the thanks you want to give them.
PUPPET 3: What about the discussion? We won’t have an answer for the class.
PUPPET 2: Wait a minute! Sure we do. We can be grateful for multiple things at the same time. There is no limit to how thankful we can be, and the more thankful we are, the more we appreciate everything and everyone who makes our lives better.
PUPPET 1: That is so true! I was going to say my family and friends, too. I was also going to say my cats and Roberto, my turtle. You guys don’t have a turtle, do you?
(PUPPETS 2 & 3 shake their heads.)
PUPPET 1: I was also going to mention strawberries and brownies because my mom knows they are my favorite, and they are in my lunchbox. However, that will probably change next week.
PUPPET 3: So, what you are saying is that we can be thankful for anything and everything we want at any time. We just need to let people know what we are thankful for to show how grateful we are that they are in our lives.
PUPPET 1: Exactly.
PUPPET 2: Wow. That was a cool discussion, you guys. Who is going to say that to the class?
PUPPET 3: I can speak for us. I got this.
(ADULT PUPPET enters.)
ADULT PUPPET: Okay. Time is up. Who would like to share first?
(PUPPET 3 raises his/her hand.)
PUPPET 3: We are most grateful for our discussion today. We learned that we do not have to pick just one thing to be grateful for. We can be thankful for anything and everything. We also talked about how we should speak up when we are grateful. It shows we appreciate everything people do for us. Therefore, we thank you for asking us to discuss this question today.
ADULT PUPPET: (Happily) No. Thank you for being such good thinkers today. I’m grateful you are all in my class. You are the reason I smile every day.
CURTAIN
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