 Hello, I'm Pukie, and I'm going to be walking you through today's session on using puppets and play to explore feelings. I hope you find it helpful. So idea number one that I shared is about roleplay, and this is because it's a lot less scary for children to explore difficult things that have happened to them or that might happen in the future or situations they feel that they're going to be facing when they do it in the third person. So we do it through roleplay through our puppets or through using characters in play. So we talk about they rather than I. So this is something we return to a lot. It's particularly beneficial if it can be done alongside an adult who's actually got a little bit of time to really hear the child's concerns and to begin to explore them. That's something that can happen at home. It's something that can happen at school, but it's really about having an adult there who's good at listening and hearing what the child has to say and picking up on those concerns. And worries and in terms of how to do it. We're just going to use our puppets or our little play figures or wherever it happens to be to kind of either replay something that's already happened or to imagine something that will. So think about how we're going to manage a new situation in the future. Just one little note here. It doesn't need to be that the figures or the puppets are particularly representative of the people or things involved in the situation. They are purely representative and the child can pick whoever they want. They might, for example, decide that they today are Superman or Spider-Man if they're feeling strong or it might be that I don't know a person who scares them is represented by a dinosaur. Sometimes there are things that we might interpret and read into the choices of characters and puppets that a child makes. Sometimes they're totally random. So just kind of go with the flow. It's up to the choice. We want this to be child led wherever possible. In terms of how we actually make that happen, there are endless possibilities here. So don't be limited by my suggestions, but rather allow your imagination to flow, but a few things that you might try are so we can replay. We can actually get a child just to show us what's happened by replaying it using puppets or using toys to represent the different people and the situation involved. Now the thing here, this is not about we're not looking here to take this to court or anything like that. We just want to try and hear for a child what's gone on. Many of our kids aren't able to write down or talk to us about what's happened or perhaps have a particular incident where their behavior has been challenging to a member of staff or something like that. And they might not be able to explain to us what's happened, but they might be able to kind of show us or just work through what was happening that day using puppets or using play. Now it's not going to be a perfect retelling, nor do we want it to be. What we actually want to see here is the child's interpretation of what was going on. So we should not be looking to try and correct or fix. We might challenge occasionally if they're using language that's unkind about other people or things like that. But generally, we want to let them go with the flow and show us what they think happened and how they felt it and how they show it through play will often be very, very telling of their interpretation of a situation and we can often understand quite a lot there about particularly what's gone wrong if things have kind of escalated. We can use mind reading with our puppets and toys as well. So we might sometimes freeze frame a situation when they're showing us what happened in the classroom. So they might go, OK, let's pause the moment. Now let's just jump into the shoes of, I don't know, Mr Potato Head over here, who is representing your friend Simon. How do you think Simon felt at this moment? What was Simon going to do next and how was he thinking of feeling? Or let's step into Superman here, who is representing your art teacher. What do you think he was thinking at this point? Where was his mind and what did he think was going to happen next and how do you think he felt when X happened? So we kind of freeze frame when we jump into those sort of multiple points of view. And even if you're doing very simple kind of role play that might be between two different puppets interacting just every now and then, just stopping thinking, what do you think this puppet feels? How would this puppet feel if this puppet said X or did Y? And it can be really, really helpful just to jump into those different points of view. Really challenging for some children, but actually a really good skill to exercise trying to explore that kind of theory of mind and the way that different people think and trying to imagine the world from their point of view. And then finally, we can use our puppets and play to actually look ahead to the future. We might be exploring fear situations that come up often and thinking about how we might manage those situations, how we might cape and thrive in these situations, or we might use our puppets and play to explore a specific different situation that's coming up a change, a transition or a new experience that a child is going to have. And we can use our puppets and our play to think about how that situation might play out, the different eventualities that might happen. And in particular, we can then begin to unpick some of the worries that a child might have if they're anxious about a situation and do our if, then planning. So we explore with our puppets, with our play in a non-confrontational fun way, the different things that kind of could go wrong. And we say, OK, well, if that happens, then what could our puppets or our characters do? What might work here? And we use that again, that non-confrontational third person to explore the possibilities for the characters in our play situation. And hey, bingo, we've got something we can apply to this real life feared situation. Idea number two is around free play. Free play is amazing because it can allow a child to enter that beautiful state of flow where they are just joyful in the moment where time passes and days can go by and we don't even notice it's happened. This is amazing respite, particularly for our children who perhaps are neurodiverse or find day to day life a little bit more challenging than their peers. Being able to have that respite of joyful flow activities is just amazing and will make them much more energised for the rest of the day. So it can kind of relax and calm and help to regulate. So that is sometimes just reason enough, but also it's just fun. And it can be a really nice bond building activity to do with a child too. So we might think about who gets involved in this kind of place. The child might do it on their own, but we might bring in certain adults, particularly those with whom we are hoping to bond build. So again, great one if we've got new adults involved with the child and we're trying to build that trust playing alongside letting the child lead the play and really enjoying the flow of that play that is very child led, very, very bond building and again, great activity for parents and carers to get involved into if they feel able to. And how do we do it? Actually, this one's super simple. We just make the space, provide the toys and they don't have to be anything expensive, you know, a few sticks and some leaves and some mud is all that you need if you're outside inside just really whatever you can lay your hands on kids will naturally play if given space and feeling safe. They will play and then just let the child lead. Of course, you might have all sorts of fancy toys that you might use for free play and that's fabulous too, but just whatever you have, just give them space and give them permission to just let go and play. OK, and how do we actually make this work? So first of all, as an adult who has an interest in play and who might go and learn some of these skills and have some ideas about how to do it well and have practiced, if you can actually just let go and play alongside the child, then that can be really, really helpful to show them how to play because they might not have these skills and it might give them ideas about how to play and get them kind of started, get that spark going and also that can be super helpful for adults as to not all adults have learned to play, not all of them have had safe spaces in which they can learn these skills and so they're not able to support their child so well in this kind of free play. So you might sometimes get the adults involved too. And you're not going to say, this is how you play. Here's a lesson in playing. Some adults might invite that, but often actually they will just absorb watching you play alongside their child and then we begin to build their confidence. We start to draw them in, we start to get them involved and actually it's really confidence building for the adult as well as for the child and helps that bond building between adult and child. One thing to note here, if you're working with a family where the adults find it hard to play and they've not learned or they don't let go and they don't do it, then those bonds may well not be quite as secure between adult and child and so helping the adult to learn to play and getting them involved in that bond building activity of playing is such a brilliant thing that you can do and doesn't involve huge, huge skills and understanding on your part. You're just creating that safe space and doing a little bit of showing and leading the way and making it feel safe to be a bit silly and let go and have fun with the child. So in terms of like what else we need to do, so we're going to lead, we're going to just then provide the toys and the puppets and just be alongside. We don't necessarily need to join in with the play all the time. If we're requested, then we should join in. And sometimes if we if we want to support the play, we might ask particular questions or just drop in little seeds of ideas. We want the child to really lead the play wherever possible, but sometimes a little bit of prompting, a little bit of supporting, a little bit of guidance from us can help that play to continue and allow them to go a little bit deeper into the situation. So we might ask a question. Oh, what would happen if it rained next? I wonder what would happen if their friend came around to play at this point, you know, just asking interested, interesting questions. And then with free play, the other thing we can do is just notice. Don't use these free play moments as moments to go deeper, meaningful, necessarily with the child. If they're enjoying the play, just watch the play, notice it, take some notes and come back later. If there are certain people, places, themes, ideas that are coming up again and again in that free play and they will, these are the things that your child may find really, really helpful to explore with you at another point. So you might explore them through play, but not while they're really like going with the flow and really enjoying the play. We just notice and come back to those repeated themes. Idea number three is around using puppets and play for skills and language development. This can be used more generally, not just around exploring emotions and feelings and things, but actually for our children who've got particular sort of wellbeing and emotional type issues or situations they need to address. We can particularly zone in on those if we want to. More broadly though, it's important to note that those children who we might be providing extra support because they struggle with things like low confidence or self-esteem issues, or they've got other challenging stuff going on in their lives. Actually, you might use puppets and play and things to develop some of their basic skills around like number and letter because building those skills and that confidence gives them the springboard that they need to just generally become more confident and build their self-esteem and help them learn, I can and so on. So actually, this is a really massive kind of area and can be a really nice fun way that we can develop some really important skills with our children. When we develop skills and language through puppets and play, it feels a bit less scary for our children. It feels a bit more fun for us and we can often kind of keep going at it a little bit longer than we would otherwise. And children often don't even realise that they're learning, but they're learning so much. I mean, it's teaching my grandmother to suck eggs here, but it's kind of like the foundation of the whole EYFS kind of model and why it is just so, so powerful. So we can really lean into this, not just with those early years, but right up through play is a helpful way to learn at every age and stage, even with adults as well. So this is something that can work one to one. You can do it as like some more group interventions or even with kind of whole classes. And again, your imagination is your only limit here, really. And how do we do it? There's all sorts of different things here, but basically having a bit of an idea about what are the skills or the language of development needed by a particular child and then just try to identify particular games or puppets or types of play that might specifically support those skills and that language that is needed. How does this look in practice? So first of all, actually just watch a child play. So if they're in that free flow state of play, either alone or together, actually our job then can just become nurturing and noticing the desired behaviour. So if we've got a child who we know really needs to work on their sharing or their cooperative skills or their problem solving skills or they use some good language, we're just going to notice when this happens and we're going to praise them in a way that feels acceptable to that child. So we're going to notice it, we're going to praise it. It will naturally happen. We want to see more of it. So we're going to do what feels good for that child. We might write down, we might take pictures, we might do whatever feels good for them, but pick up on the specifics of what they did well and with our praise where we can, if it's acceptable, the child, we want to be spontaneous, notice it when it happens. We want to be specific. It was really good that you X, Y, Z. So not just that was good, but specifically tell them what was good and we want to be sincere. So don't say it unless we mean it because kids are detectives when it comes to our feelings. You can use all sorts of board games, number games, word games to nurture specific skills. There's a whole ton of very specific ones out there that are being developed all the time. You can make your own and actually making your own board games or word games or number games with children can be fun. You can do things like write on Jenga blocks to create questions or sums and that sort of thing as well. So you can create your own or you can just take games that you already really love and think about what skills might these be helping to develop and then really lean into them. When it comes to play, if you can take things that you like doing anyway, then that will really sort of inject that sense of fun and make it much more fun for you and the child so you're more likely to really get a lot from it. And then finally, we can use our puppets in particular, but also our little characters and things to develop our social scripts. So if a child's got a tricky time ahead or they've been through something that they found a bit challenging or it's kind of going round and around in their head, we can do our kind of role play using our puppets and then specifically think about the social scripts involved in those situations they're thinking about. What could they say next? What would be good words to use here and practice them? So it's really important that our children get confident using words that feel good for them and that they've had a chance to try them again and again and again so that when they actually really need to use them in a situation, they're able to kind of rely on kind of muscle memory and rehearsal to return to those words, to those scripts that they really need. So for example, you might have a child who's facing some really challenging friendship issues and they're just kind of going round in circles with this and they're not making good progress. So then we might use our puppets to explore these friendship issues and the puppets might think about different things that they could say. If the friend does X, what could the puppet say? And then the child will voice the puppet and they can practice saying whatever assertive or calming or helpful or other phrases that might be helpful for the puppet. Don't tell the child what to say, instead explore with them because what we're looking for in these kind of script type situations is not for the child to use your words because they won't and they'll feel uncomfortable, but rather for them to, with your help, develop their own words and then practice saying them. The best kind of scripts are the ones that we've created for ourselves that feel right in our mouths. So our job is not to tell, but rather to support and scaffold so that a child can create their own scripts. We might then rehearse, revisit, replay and practice this often. And if there is a particular live situation for a child, it's really worth revisiting that with the puppets again next time. So did this situation come up again? Did you try any of those scripts that we rehearsed last time and what happened? Oh, it didn't go quite to plan. Okay, maybe let's play it out and you can show me what did happen. And let's think about what we might do differently next time. Okay, at this point in the session is the moment when we pause and actually we try and turn the ideas into actions because this is the bit where I remind you, of course, that my gift to you are the ideas in the session, hopefully, and your gift to yourself and the children in your care is what you do next with them. So we looked at three things here with regards to puppets and play. We thought about how we can use them for role play to act out certain situations that have happened or might be going to happen. We thought about free play and how that can help a child enter a state of flow and can help to point us towards some of the things that might be on a child's mind that might need exploring at another time. And we thought about play and puppets as a particular way of developing the skills and language that a specific child might need to work on right now. So you can think about three things. One, what's already working well? What practice can be shared within the group? What can you cherry pick from each other and what could you be doing more of because you thought, on reflection, this is really great. More children could benefit from it or I could spend more time doing it. What could you try next? What ideas were sparked during the session and what are things that you could give a go as a result of something that I've suggested or something that you've discussed together or a spark that has happened whilst you've been doing the session? And then turn it into really, really practical next steps. Try to make them tiny. Think about something you could do tomorrow as a result of something that you have learnt today and commit to actually doing it. Much better to take a tiny, tiny, tiny step that feels achievable than think about taking a big step that feels unachefable. A few resources here. So first of all, you might want to think about Play Do. We love Play Do in our house. I've got a little guide here about ways to use Play Do to get kids talking, which you may have access before. Next, if you can, then 100 Ways Your Child Can Learn Through Play is a really brilliant book one of my favourite books because I am not a natural player. And this book has so many different suggestions for play and how to use it really, really good for parents, really, really good for support staff and so on. Just for me, it provided a framework for play that may play feel much more accessible as a non-playful adult. So I'm very grateful to this book and it's just brilliant. It is specifically aimed at children with SEND but like so many things aimed at children with SEND it's just blooming brilliant and could be used for everyone. So I would really, really heavily recommend this book. And then in terms of listening, I did a beautiful podcast with a guy called Greg Botrill who also has like books and YouTube channel and all that kind of thing. He's great fun and he did a podcast with me all about play and how adults can let go of their adultness and play. So if like me, you're not a natural player, you might enjoy listening. And also just Greg was just so much fun. It's just a lovely lesson. He was one of the most fun, enthusiastic, joyful podcast guest I ever had. So worth a listen if you wanna just feel good. Okay, I hope that was helpful.