Shadow Puppets and a Shadow Play with Children: A Waldorf-Inspired Guide

To make a shadow play, cut simple figures from black card, tape each one to a stick, and hold them between a lamp and a screen of paper or stretched white cloth. Your audience sits on the other side and sees only the shadows. For a first play, choose a short story your child already knows by heart, with 2 or 3 characters, and tell it while the shadows move. Some Waldorf schools start with simple shadow puppets in the lower grades and save a full shadow play, like the Ramayana, for grade 5 or later. At home, a grade 1 or 2 child can put on a fable in an afternoon.

Why shadow puppets suit this age

Shadows come before puppets. Many children find their own shadow long before they make a puppet: running from it, stamping on it, watching it grow at teatime. Robert Louis Stevenson's "My Shadow" from 1885 catches that exactly, a little shadow that "goes in and out with me", now tall, now hardly there at all. It's a good poem to learn by heart alongside a shadow play, and there are more in Waldorf recitation and poetry.

A shadow puppet asks for little. There are no faces to paint or clothes to sew. What matters is the outline: the fox's pointed ears, the heron's long neck, the king's crown. That suits a child who's learning to look at the shape of things, and it lets a 6-year-old make a puppet that works on the first try.

Shadows are also a way to meet light. In grade 2, a Waldorf child often marks where their shadow falls in the morning, at midday and in the afternoon, before they ever meet a clock. The time and clocks article walks through it. A shadow play in the same weeks lets your child play with what they've just noticed outside.

How do Waldorf classes use shadow plays?

Puppetry runs right through a Waldorf school, and shadow puppets have their place in it.

In the lower grades, shadow puppets are usually simple and made in class. At the Waldorf School of Orange County in California, children in the lower grades make and use rough shadow puppets and table-top puppets during lessons. The marionettes come much later, in grade 9.

In the middle grades, the shadow play becomes a class production. Jennifer Aguirre, who has taught puppetry in grades 1 to 8 at Sierra Waldorf School in California, brings shadow puppetry to grade 5 for a production of the Ramayana. She writes that it asks the puppeteers to move their figures in a lifelike way, and that the production is a big social experience for the whole class. That fits the grade 5 curriculum, where the old stories of India are told.

In the upper grades, shadow plays meet science. At Ashwood Waldorf School in Maine, the oldest class built a translucent screen after their optics block. From backstage they worked dozens of paper puppets, a praying mantis with moving legs and a python with a flickering red tongue among them, and added color with gels. The Goetheanum's Waldorf curriculum notes for grade 10 describe shadow figures built by the laws of mechanics and optics, with outlines as sharp as possible.

So a shadow play at home in grades 1 to 4 is an early, simple step on a road the Waldorf school walks for years. Keep it simple and let it be play.

How to make shadow puppets

This takes about an hour for 3 puppets. The method follows IET Education's shadow puppet activity for primary schools.

You'll need:

• Black card, or the plain side of a cereal box
• Scissors, and a craft knife for you if you want cut-out eyes or windows
• Masking tape
• Wooden skewers with the points snipped off, or craft sticks
• A pencil

Steps:

1. Draw the outline big. A puppet about the length of your hand is a good size. Draw the animal or person side-on, because a side view reads best as a shadow. Exaggerate the thing that makes it itself: long ears for the hare, a curled tail for the fox.
2. Cut it out. Younger children can cut along a thick line you've drawn. Keep the shapes chunky. Thin legs tear.
3. Add a hole or two. A punched eye or a cut-out window lets light through and makes a shadow come alive. This is a grown-up job with the craft knife.
4. Tape on the stick. Fix the stick to the back of the puppet with masking tape, running up the middle so it balances.
5. Try a moving joint. For children of 8 or 9, cut the arm or the jaw as a separate piece and join it with a paper fastener. Tape a second stick to the moving part. Chinese shadow puppets can have 12 to 24 joints, so start with one.

How to make the screen and light

A shadow play needs three things in a line: the light, the puppets and the screen. The audience sits on the far side of the screen.

The screen. Tracing paper or baking paper taped across a large gap works well for a small show. IET Education uses tracing paper. Cut a big window out of the front of a cardboard box, tape paper over it, and you have a tabletop theatre. For a bigger show, stretch a white sheet tight across a doorway or between two chairs. Wrinkles show, so pull it taut.

The light. One light, behind the puppeteers, pointing at the screen. A torch or a desk lamp with an LED bulb is easiest and stays cool. Turn off the other lights in the room.

Sharp or soft. Chinese Shadow Puppetry's guide explains that a frosted bulb gives fuzzy shadows unless the puppet touches the screen. A clear bulb gives sharper shadows, so the puppeteer can step back and play with size. Your child will find this in minutes. Held against the screen, the wolf is small and crisp. Pulled back towards the lamp, he grows huge and soft at the edges. A giant or a dragon can walk in from far away that way.

Choosing a story

Choose a story your child already knows well. They'll be busy moving the puppet, so they shouldn't also have to remember what happens.

Grade 1. A short fairy tale with few characters and a road to travel. The Three Billy Goats Gruff works beautifully, with the goats crossing a bridge at the bottom edge of the screen and the troll rising from beneath it. See Waldorf fairy tales and storytelling for tales that suit the age.

Grade 2. Fables are perfect for shadows: two animals, one moment, a clear ending. The fox and the grapes needs one fox and one vine. The tortoise and the hare needs two animals and a finishing line. Choose one from the grade 2 fables and saints' stories, and see the grade 2 curriculum comparison if you're choosing a program for the year.

Grade 3. Noah's ark gives your child a reason to make animals in pairs, and the dove coming back with a leaf makes a lovely last shadow. The grade 3 curriculum guide sets out the Old Testament stories of the year.

Grade 4. The Norse myths are full of great shapes: Thor with his hammer, the eight-legged horse Sleipnir, the World Serpent coiling across the bottom of the screen. Moving joints come into their own here.

Shadow puppetry is old. UNESCO describes wayang from Java, where a puppeteer works leather figures on slender sticks against a screen lit from behind. It also lists Chinese shadow puppetry, played on a translucent cloth screen with music and singing. If your child is taken with it, a picture of a wayang figure is a lovely thing to look at together.

Putting on the play

1. Tell it first. Tell the story aloud once with the lights on, so everyone knows it.
2. Rehearse behind the screen. Let your child try each puppet in the light. Where does the fox come in? Where does the troll hide?
3. You tell, they move. For a first play, you speak the story and your child moves the puppets. Speaking and moving at the same time is hard at 6 or 7.
4. Keep your bodies low. Kneel below the screen so your heads don't cast shadows.
5. Open and close. Light the lamp to begin. Switch it off at "the end", and the screen goes dark on its own.
6. Swap. Next time your child tells the story and you move the puppets. Older children can take both parts.

If you're already following Starpath's grade 2 Introduction to Time block, a shadow play fits well at the end of the week your child tracks their shadow outside. Otherwise any afternoon in the darker months works, and a play for a grandparent is a lovely thing to aim for.

Where to start this week

Pick one fable or fairy tale your child can already tell. Tonight, draw 2 or 3 shapes on black card together and cut them out. Tomorrow, tape paper over a box window, set up a torch and try the shadows. Tell the story once through with your child moving the puppets, then put it all by the play corner so they can come back to it.