So its been a long time since I have posted here life has been kind of hectic for me lately. But through it all I have become our churches sole puppeteer and the only person in the puppet ministry. So far i have only done 2 days. Our church has 2 Sunday morning services and the children's ministry department is actually the portion I am part of. I have been doing the skits for the 3, 4, and 5 year olds for the second service. The way they work it here is those age groups have 4 "stations" that they go through. they all start off together in worship where they do some songs. Then they go to 1 of the 3 stations A) snack B)craft C)story. I am in the story part. We Use a preset curriculum. The lesson for that day has a puppet skit that is generally used after the story for a "practical application" for the lesson. The skits are usually 2 puppets interacting with the teacher so I have to go through and reduce it to one puppet interacting with the teacher. That has been a bit challanging. I have to switch and drop some lines and still keep the heart of what is there. I made a "stage" from pvc and some fabric i had laying about and its big enough for 2-3 people in the classroom corner. Its mobile so that it can be taken down as I only do the performances once a month and the only one using the puppets that the church has. I am going to have our AV guy take some footage next time so I can get a bit of feed back from you guys.

I have also been talking to the children's ministry leaders about expanding the puppet usage into things like our Halloween event "light the night" and our Christmas out reach for families that cant afford Christmas. The "light the night" event we have a carnival like set up for the kids and families to go through including some inflatable "jump houses". I am thinking that we could set up a room with the stage and have a short 10 minute skit then hand out some candy or what ever at the end.

The Christmas event we bring the families in serve them a turkey dinner and then allow them to "shop". they only send out a few families at a time and while the rest are eating and waiting they provide entertainment. Usually consisting of singing of Christmas carols. I think a nice Christmas like skit would be neat to do.

I would like to involve more people and would need to if I am to do these. I would also like to do other shows BUT i am not sure how to get it all started. I have received alot of kudos for the few performances and script changes so far. I have been told that they had someone that tried it once but it was very bad in presentation. I think i need to get back in contact with some of the local people I had called before but was bad timing and never got to follow through with.

The other night we got the Vid cam out and my girls and i made a few improved skits. I have to get them in a format I can post them and let you all see.

Sorry I have droned on just wanted to reconnect and let you all know how i was doing with my puppets