Activities & Days Out / 22 April, 2020 / Nanny Anita

St. George’s Day Shadow Puppet Theatre

I always feel that St. George’s day passes the English by with very little attention, which makes me rather sad, especially when so much effort is put into St. Patrick’s Day. Last year we made shields and junk box dragons. This year we have decided to mark this 23^rd April with a shadow puppet re-enactment of the story of St. George and the dragon.

You will need:

• Paper
• Scissors
• Tape
• Bamboo skewers
• White sheet or a blank wall
• A lamp

Draw out your characters that you will need; we had St. George, the dragon, a princess, a castle and a horse. Then cut them out.

Tape a bamboo skewer to the back of them.

Set up your sheet, we had a wardrobe that we could use and hung the sheet between the two draws. The “audience then sat behind the sheet to watch the theatre, which created this really lovely ghostly effect on the shadows. If you don’t have a place that you could hang up a sheet, then just use a relatively blank wall.

The view from behind the curtain.

Another one from the audience.

Make sure that the room is dark and place your lamp so that it is shining at the sheet/wall.

Then let your little ones use the puppets to tell their own story of St. George and the dragon.

We all got involved in the process of creating a theatre experience, we made announcements for people to turn off their phones, not eat loud sweets and extinguish any cigarettes. Then we turned off the lights to imitate the beginning of the show. The stories that everyone came up with were incredibly creative and also very funny;

EC’s dragon managed to not only steal the princess but made off with the WHOLE castle.

While Leonora’s dragon breathed pink smoke and feel in love with a magical horse.

YC getting fancy with 3 puppets in one hand.

This was such a fun way to spend the afternoon, and I can tell that we are probably going to do this activity over and over again.

Make sure you follow our activity board on Pinterest for more ideas.

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