About

Puppets are dolls made to represent people and animals that are manually controlled by their puppeteers and are used to tell stories and entertain people. Puppet theatre has been a popular form of entertainment throughout history, and it is practised in different forms around the world. Puppets come in many forms: from the simplest finger puppets; hand or sock puppets; shadow puppets that appear by light projected on a screen; sophisticated stick puppets; string puppets or marionettes; ventriloquists’ dummies are also puppets; and so too are large carnival puppets used in parades. Puppeteers will often control one or more puppets during a theatre performance, but some puppets are controlled by two puppeteers, and a massive carnival puppet might be controlled by a team of puppeteers. The skilful control of puppets is called puppetry.
 

Your task

Design a puppet to be used in a puppet theatre performance. Yours may be any kind of puppet, employing any puppetry technique of your choosing. Build your puppet and, if you need a stage, you must design and build that too. At the end of the project, when your puppet is complete, you will demonstrate it by holding a puppet theatre performance to entertain your classmates, teachers, and parents. Work on this project in a team with a group of your classmates, where each member designs and builds their own puppet and combines them for the puppet theatre performance.
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The design thinking stages

Follow the five design thinking stages to ensure that you think of everything and do everything necessary in order to succeed in your design project. First, you must UNDERSTAND the design topic and the needs of the users. With that understanding, you can DECIDE what is important to your design solution and what is not so important. Then you CREATE to come up with ideas and improve them. Then you BUILD your chosen design idea in a physical form and improve it through trial-and-error. Finally, you TEST your built design idea to get the opinions of users. ​​​​​​​Use the methods from the Design Thinking for Schools website as you follow the design thinking stages.
 

Note for teachers

​​​​​​​Read the guide for teachers on Safety for the BUILD Stage for Level III to safely supervise this design project.