I had a bright idea once, to introduce a “guest teacher” – one that can pitch at times when my son finds his mother’s teaching a little boring. So I thought of using soft toys or hand puppets. Now I am no ventriloquist, but I managed to give our first “guest teacher” (Monty the Meerkat) his own voice (even though he sounds a lot like me) and character.
Originally I thought of having a new guest “teacher” for every new animal we studied, but then Buck became so fond of Monty when we studied Meerkats, he didn’t want him to go away (I guess we’ll stick with him for some time still, depending on how long poor Monty will last, because the dogs love him a LOT too and snitch him whenever they can…!)
The whole idea behind it was to make the teaching more fun. Monty seemed to bring a lot of joy to a little boy. I found a Meerkat crochet pattern here, and asked my mom to make it for me (I have no interest in learning to crochet…). When Monty was about ¾ finished, my mom showed him to me. By then he didn’t have stuffing in his tummy yet, but his hind feet and tail were already attached. I told my mom that she could just round him off, because he would do very well for a hand puppet! I could move the pipe cleaners in his arms with my fingers from the inside too, giving Monty a little more character. Worked like a charm!
