USE OF PUPPETS IN EDUCATION

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25249, 30 July 1947, Page 2

USE OF PUPPETS IN EDUCATION

WORK OF JUNIOR RED CROSS

Puppets are helping to teach good eating habits to school-children in Victoria, Australia. Under the direction of the Junior Red Cross; such puppet personalities as Vitamin Mickie Milk, Charlie Cheese, Egbert Egg and Terry Tomato, enact daily dramas to make boys ana girls more vitamin-conscious, and encourage them to pass by sweets and ice-cream sodas in favour of nutritious foods. The puppets and portable • theatre were made by the Red Cross handcrafts division in the workshops of Rockingham Convalescent Home for former servicemen. The puppet theatre is shown as part of a special drive to increase the present 22,000 membership of Junior Red Cross in Victoria: At the same time it is providing an excellent educational medium in an attractive guise. Junior Red Cross members are intensely interested in making puppets and producing plays. They learn the plays off by heart, because it is hard to manage a puppet in one hand and a script in the other. The ancient art of puppetry, once used only for its entertainment value, is now a force jn the education of adults as well as children. Red Cross developed the idea of using puppets for educational purposes from a similar idea used at the Queen Victoria Hospital. Melbourne, where puppet shows with a food message are periodically produced by the hospital staff for mothers attending the ante-natal clinic.