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Past Times History

Resources and Activities to Make History Come Alive

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  • silhouette puppets of Joseph and Mary on a stand with a phone and laptop.

    How to

    Stop motion puppets for the holidays

    December 17, 2022December 18, 2022

     In 2020 I made patterns available to act out the Nativity story as a shadow play. This advent season I am sharing just a few patterns to show you how you can use the

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  • Silhouette puppets showing a man holding the reigns of a horse, which pulls a covered wagon with a woman on the front seat holding a little child.

    American history

    Local history tableaus

    October 5, 2022February 3, 2023

    There are 22 places in the United States that are called Lawrence. But only one of them got that name because the original one, Maidenhead, was thought to be too embarrassing for ladies. On the

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  • Puppet of Harriet Tubman sitting on a galloping hors

    Black history

    Riding a galloping horse

    May 8, 2021May 16, 2021

    Shadow puppetry offers opportunities to act out stories from the Underground Railroad, the network of free Blacks, Quakers, and abolitionists who helped men, women, and children escape slavery in the decades prior to the Civil

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  • Silhouette puppet of a wolf with movable jaw, front and back

    How to

    How to make puppet rods with duct or painters tape

    March 23, 2020March 24, 2020

    In this instructional video I am showing you how to make a silhouette or shadow puppet using a cheap and sturdy alternative for rods that are attached to the puppets with velcro. The instructions are

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  • shadow puppets of man riding a horse and wagon

    Tricks and Techniques

    Riding a horse and wagon

    February 9, 2020September 11, 2022

    If you want to act out stories from the Underground Railroad or other stories in which puppets need transportation, you may want to use a horse and wagon. In our printable library you will find

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  • Greek mythology

    Using an Overhead Projector for Shadow Puppetry

    December 2, 2018May 24, 2021

    If you are doing a shadow puppetry performance for larger audiences, using an overhead projector as the light source has several advantages. The light is stronger than traditional lamps and is distributed more evenly over

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  • Shadow puppet screen showing a man kissing a life size puppet, project from an overhead project.

    Tricks and Techniques

    Going Bigger: Using Masks and Direct Projection

    December 1, 2018July 15, 2019

    If you are using an overhead projector and big screen and want to have some variety in size (for instance to emphasize the difference between gods and mortals) there are two ways of doing so.

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  • foam board portable screen showing boy and girl puppet

    How to

    Using a Tri-fold Presentation Board for a Durable Screen

    November 26, 2018October 30, 2021

    If you are thinking of doing shadow puppetry more than a handful of times you may want  to invest in a durable frame that can be stored easily and will withstand stains and humidity. One

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  • How to

    Using Bendable Straws for Puppet Rods

    November 24, 2018July 16, 2019

    Instead of using velcro to connect moving rods to a puppet a cheap alternative is the use use bendable straws, first introduced by David and Donna Wisniewski in Worlds of Shadow, Teaching with Shadow Puppetry. You can

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