Meet Pedro and María… as finger puppets!
Role play for young learners? Yes, please!
It’s no secret: in early language education (and even in middle and high school!), finger puppets are a win! Somehow, sometimes, it seems less intimidating to pretend you’re a puppet speaking Spanish rather than be yourself speaking Spanish. Of course, young children usually love any kind of role play with stuffed or puppet creatures. (My children can’t get enough of Toca Boca’s record-a-scene feature.)
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So, when a customer recently suggested stuffed toys of the Calico Spanish Stories characters, or maybe puppets, we jumped on the idea. We’d already played around with creating a foldable version of Rita la rana verde, but let’s just say that idea didn’t pan out. It turned out that folding a proper frog doll from a sheet of cardstock was a project worthy of a college architecture class. We knew the characters needed to be easy to make. We researched some designs for puppet characters and our amazing graphic artist came up with foldable cone finger puppets. She didn’t stop there. She made the backgrounds! And then she made Pepe’s birthday cake and birthday presents!
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Meet our finger puppets
We’re making Pedro el pez azul and María la mona amarilla available here on the blog. Other characters, including Pepe el perro café and Goyo el gato negro, as well as the backgrounds and props for playing with the characters, will be made available on the member site. Stories subscribers will have access to printables of all our characters and various backgrounds and props. Just click the image below for the PDF of Pedro and María.
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Click for PDF.
But what if the kids want to color it?
Or if you have 300 students who each want their own puppets and who’s going to make that many color copies? We’ve made you a blackline version, too.
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Pepe who and Stories what?
Haven’t met Pepe el perro café or tried Stories yet? If you click the red button on the homepage, you’ll quickly be into your 7-day free trial. You get to explore 100% of our content (including the printable puppets) for 7 days with no obligation. Enjoy, and please tweet, Instagram, or email us your pictures of your learners using these great finger puppets! We love to see kids learning with our products.
11 Comments
I love the puppets! Two quick questions: 1) Will one be available that students can color? Printing a page in color for the hundreds of students I see would do not possible. Also, as a subscriber, where do I find the other character puppets? Gracias!
Ah, black and white, great call. We’ll get on that right away.
We’re phasing in the other character puppets very soon! You should get an email about it each time one is added.
Thanks for the suggestion!
The blackline version of Pedro and María is now linked in this post. Enjoy!
Muchas gracias!
I think art projects in general (around these characters and the conversation questions) are great for the pre-literate learners using the Calico program. I have been inventing creative projects for the young learners. Perhaps we can pool ideas through the website.
We’d love to have a section where people can share ideas – for now, please feel free to share them on our Facebook page. We’re eager to see everyone’s creativity! https://www.facebook.com/CalicoSpanish
Are you selling stuff on tpt, wasnt sure if this was you or not
https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Listening-exercise-for-Spanish-students-Pedro-el-Pez-UPDATED-IMPROVED-4228456
https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/3-Listening-Comprehension-Activities-BUNDLE-DISTANCE-LEARNING-5206227
https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Listening-exercise-for-Spanish-students-El-Cumpleanos-de-Pepe-5154734
Hi Tess, thanks so much for posting this! There really is so much pirated material out there and it’s a great service to let companies know when someone may be using their materials without permission. In this case, we did license Mi Camino Spanish to use our copyrighted artwork in activities related to our YouTube videos. If you use her activities, we’d love to hear how you enjoy the videos that they go with!
Incidentally, we do sell material on TeachersPayTeachers in our store Calico World. Almost all of the material there is available to our subscribers, but through TPT we make available pieces that are helpful for anyone regardless of the curriculum they use.
I looked again at their stuff, i dont think these are yours, you may want to go to tpt and let them know to remove your stuff, this person is also selling course 1 and as you click on the pictures you can see your stuff in it
https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Spanish-Basics-Complete-Course-Level-1-Grades-K-3-5644613
So glad to hear that you are selling stuff on TPT, I will be sure to go and check it out, and so glad that she has your permission to use your pictures, I just wanted to make sure, if someone was doing that to me, I would want someone to let me know.
Have a great evening
Tess
Agreed! We actually have had to ask TPT to remove products where a seller was using our content without authorization. We so appreciate the heads-up!