Students' imaginations were on full display at Green Fields Country Day School last week during an artist-in-residence program that brought puppeteer and performance artist Patti Smithsonian to the school.
She worked with second- through fifth-graders on puppet making, performance skills and developing scenes and characters.
The students spent the week creating their own puppets, writing stories to go along with their puppets and learning how to animate them.
Smithsonian's visit culminated with performances by the students Sunday during a K-5 open house at the school, 6000 N. Camino de la Tierra.
But students didn't use old-school brown paper bags and socks to create their puppets.
"I thought it would be the ones where we use our hands," third-graders Maya Jans said.
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Instead, Maya and her peers learned about shadow puppets and created small puppets out of construction paper they projected onto a screen using an overhead projector.
The puppets had moveable joints and were animated by the students.
Third-grader Justin Adams produced a dragon.
"My dragon will fly through space and shoot fire out of his wings," he said. "He's going to save the planet."
Julia Hekimian's puppet was busy breaking out of jail.
"My cat is in jail for eating a bird and when the jail guard leaves for dinner he accidentally forgets to take the key and since I'm so skinny I grabbed the keys and got out," the third-grader said.
Third-grader Lily Scott created her own cat for her performance with classmate Maya Jans.
For their story, Lily's cat flies around looking for tuna fish and joins Maya's dog for a trip to the fair.
Eventually, Maya says, "they're going to fly away and become constellations."
Lily Yellott, a third-grader, had a house and kite in her story.
She enjoyed learning about puppetry with Smithsonian and another artist, Naomi Marshall, but most of all, she loved making the puppets.
"I just love doing crafts," she said. "It's so fun. I've always wanted to make puppets."
Smithsonian, who lives outside of Colorado Springs, Colo., studied at the Institut International de la Marionnette in Charleville-Mézières, France, and has worked in Taiwan, Mexico, Guatemala and Turkey.
She has been honored by The Jim Henson Foundation. Henson created "The Muppets."
When she visits schools for artist-in-residence programs, Smithsonian wants students to experience an explosion of imagination.
Bursts of creativity were abundant at Green Fields,
Here's what happened after Julia's cat escaped from jail: "I got out leaping into the night and got stuck in a tree. The jail guard finds me.
"When they get me out of the tree, they drop me in a dark hole and once I land in the dark hole, the jail falls down on me. It's better than being stuck in the tree," Julia said.
Smithsonian was pleased with the experience the students had while making puppets. "We need more imagination and creativity with kids. It validates a sense of who they are."
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