Ken Haack's Puppet Tale

As a new substitute teacher, I took one of my puppets to school with me. It was my last day with these kids since they were going off track and so I decided to have some fun with them. The puppet I have is a monkey which I named Marco, but I did not have a voice for Marco yet, so I had him whisper his answers to me.

Anyway, the kids loved Marco. They would talk to him, play with him and laugh when he did something funny. Toward the end of the day, one girl came to the realization that she had spent most of the day talking to a puppet. In fact she stated that quite loudly to the rest of the class.

The funniest part of this realization is that it did not stop her, she just kept right on interacting with Marco, and insisted on giving him a hug before she left. In fact, most of the kids gave Marco a hug when they left.

For several months after, whenever I would see them they would ask about Marco, as if he were a real monkey or person. This was a class of 5th graders, so the fact that they came to the realization is not astonishing, but the fact that they interacted so well with him, was quite astonishing, to me at least.