Puppets = Engagement

Stewart, the kids say he looks like me 

Pi Turnstyle, my 3rd puppet

So the question of the week is "What's with the puppets?"  and it is a fair question.  I was working with some finger puppets recently and started figuring out the green screen video program.  I have turned to puppets because I like puppets and someone has to be in these videos.  I came up with a fun concept the "Tweet of the Week" staring Candide Cow.
I have to say that I really enjoyed making the video, but I have worked with more expressive puppets (sorry Candide).  I asked youtube to teach me to make muppet style puppets and I have been working on them non-stop for a week. Here is the short playlist I built. 

The next step is to roll out a Julius Casar puppet project. I plan on having the freshmen film an all puppet cast Julius Caesar.  My pedagogical goal is to get them to work with the text as much as possible.   While the puppets are performing the students will have the script in front of them so that they will be actively reading and thinking about the text. The goal is text work and the puppets are a tool.