Waldorf Table Puppets: How to Make Them and Tell a Story with Them

A Waldorf table puppet is a simple standing figure of felt or cloth, with a round wool-stuffed head, no strings and almost no face. You set it on a low table laid with coloured silks and move it slowly while you tell the story from memory. Many Waldorf kindergarten teachers bring the puppet show only after the children have heard the story told a few times. Making a first puppet takes an evening: a felt tube, a cloth head stuffed with wool, and a wooden disc to stand on. If you can't sew, you can tie a figure from a silk and a ball of wool in 10 minutes.

What makes a table puppet different?

Think of the puppets you grew up with: a glove puppet with a painted grin, bobbing up over a curtain. A Waldorf table puppet is quieter than that. It stands on the table and moves slowly, and you can see the person moving it.

Marianne Bockli writes about the kindergarten version for Ashwood Waldorf School in Maine. She describes a spare setting of coloured cloths and a few things from nature, with plain puppets moved gently. She writes that this lets children lose themselves in the story and add their own imagination to it. Rahima Baldwin Dancy is a Waldorf early childhood educator and author. She has written that stories acted out with stand-up puppets tend to calm young children, where a film of the same story can be too strong.

So the puppet show is one more way of telling a story the child already knows.

When does the puppet show come?

In a Waldorf kindergarten the story comes first, with no pictures. Davis Waldorf School tells each story for about four weeks. After several days of story circles, the teacher brings a puppet show, and after that a "people play", where the children take the parts themselves. Camellia Waldorf School works the same way. The teacher waits until the children have heard the story a few times and have their own pictures of it. Then she tells it again with puppets, cloths and toys from the classroom.

At home, that gives you a simple rhythm. Tell the story on its own for the first week. Bring the puppets in week 2. Let your child act it out, or play it with the puppets, in week 3. For choosing a story and learning it by heart, see Waldorf fairy tales and storytelling.

How to make a simple standing puppet

You don't need a pattern for your first one. The steps below follow a table puppet workshop run by parents at the Waldorf School of Orange County.

You'll need:

• A piece of wool felt, about 5 by 7 inches, for the body
• A 10-inch square of plain cotton, or cotton knit, for the head
• A handful of wool roving or batting for stuffing
• A wooden disc or a circle of stiff card, the width of the body, for the base
• A scrap of thin fabric or silk for a cape
• Embroidery thread, yarn for hair, a needle and some craft glue

Steps:

1. Make the body. Roll the felt into a tube and sew up the side with embroidery thread, using a blanket stitch. Big, colourful stitches are fine.
2. Make the head. Roll wool into a firm ball, a little bigger than a walnut. Set it in the middle of the cotton square, gather the cloth around it and tie it tightly at the neck with thread. Tuck the loose fabric below the neck into the top of the tube.
3. Join head and body. Stitch around the neck with a running stitch, then sew the head to the top of the tube.
4. Add a cape. Gather one long edge of the cape fabric with a running stitch and tie it around the neck. A cape hides the joins, and a change of cape can turn the same puppet into a king or a woodcutter.
5. Add hair. Stitch a little yarn or loose wool to the head, or skip it and use a hood.
6. Give it a base. Stuff the body loosely with wool, then glue the disc into the bottom so it stands.

Leave the face plain. If you want one, two small stitches for eyes are enough.

If you'd like a pattern, A Child's Dream sells one that Ronna McEldowney designed for kindergarten teachers. It has three sizes, from 7 to 9½ inches tall, and the hands come out from the folds of the cape. Freya Jaffke's Toymaking with Children, written from her years as a Waldorf kindergarten teacher in Germany, also has instructions for puppets.

The no-sew version

Roll a wool ball about 2½ inches across. Lay it in the middle of a square playsilk or scarf, fold the silk over it and tie it off tightly at the neck with string. That's the head. For hands, wrap a smaller ball of wool into two corners of the silk and tie those off too, as in Noe Venable's scarf puppet tutorial. Then drape the rest of the silk over a cardboard cone or a small wooden block so the figure stands. A silk figure like this can be a queen one week and a river spirit the next.

Setting up a table puppet show

Clear a low table, or use the floor with a board on it, at your child's eye level when they sit.

1. Lay the landscape. Spread a brown or green cloth for the ground. Push small balls of wool under it for hills. Add a blue silk for a river, a stone for a mountain and a branch for a tree. Keep it simple: Bockli describes colourful cloths and a few props from nature, nothing more.
2. Set the puppets out of sight. Keep them in a basket beside you, or behind a silk, and bring each one in when it enters the story.
3. Open with a signal. Light a candle, play a few notes on a lyre, or sing a short song. Then lift away a silk that covers the scene.
4. Tell and move. Speak the story as you've learned it, in a calm voice. Move only the puppet that's speaking or acting, and let the others be still. Walk the puppet, don't hop it, and lift it a little when it goes over a hill.
5. Close the same way. Cover the scene with the silk again, blow out the candle, and let it rest. No questions straight afterwards.

Keep your hands out of the scene as much as you can. Juniper Tree Puppets, a Waldorf puppetry school in Colorado, suggests small tricks for this in their telling of Sweet Porridge. A string on the pot lets the girl carry it, and a string on the wool lets the porridge spill out through the town. They also describe showing each character through gesture: the mother moves with kindness, and the daughter grows more upright as the story goes on.

For a stage you can set up in a second, drape a silk across your lap. Juniper Tree teaches whole puppet tales with one puppet and one silk this way, which is handy on a busy day.

Telling with puppets in grades 1 and 2

Table puppets aren't only for kindergarten. Jennifer Aguirre, who has taught puppetry to grades 1 to 8 at Sierra Waldorf School in California, has first and second graders sit in a wide circle on the floor. They move their own puppets on a scene of coloured silks while the story is told. She writes that the circle gives children of this age a safe space to perform and makes them less self-conscious.

At home, this is the step where your child becomes the puppeteer. In grade 1, your child can tell a fairy tale back to you with the puppets, the day after you've told it. That's the retelling the grade 1 main lesson already asks for, with something to hold. In grade 2, the fables are short and suit two puppets well: the lion and the mouse, the tortoise and the hare. If you're following Starpath's grade 2 Animal Fables block, a pair of felt animals can carry the retelling on day 2 before your child writes it down.

Making the puppets is good handwork for this age too. With you beside them, many 6 and 7-year-olds can roll the wool for a head and sew a few big stitches in the felt.

What if my child grabs the puppets?

Young children often want to join in, and Camellia Waldorf School describes children helping to move the puppets during the story. If it breaks up the telling, give your child one puppet and a job. "You can be the goose, and you walk when I say the goose's name." Or keep the show hands-off and tell your child the puppets will be in the play basket afterwards.

Most children, after a few shows, start putting on their own. That's the point, and a sign the story has gone in. For more on the play corner and simple toys, see Waldorf toys and play at home.

Where to start this week

Choose the story you're already telling. Make one puppet for its main character this evening, sewn or tied from a silk. Keep telling the story on its own for the rest of the week. Next Monday, lay a cloth on the table, add a stone and a branch, light the candle and tell it again with the puppet. If you're working with younger children, Waldorf kindergarten at home shows where a puppet story fits in the day, and our kindergarten curriculum comparison looks at the programmes for that age.