The Story of the Root Children by Sibylle von Olfers, written in 1906, makes a lovely puppetry performance with 1st grade students. We have been performing this annually for many years at the Sierra Waldorf School. The 1st grade students perform this story with the two table puppets they make– one of a root child and the second of a flower child along with a flying felted bee and beeswax insect.

Originally this story was my very first puppet exploration as an adult, created for my own children, and then performed for several years at Sierra Waldorf School’s May Day festivals with my niece hidden under the puppet stage moving the root children finger puppets, to the surprise of the audience! The impulse to bring it to the 1st grade as a puppetry project came to me during a conference presentation by Craig Holdrege called “Reconnecting with Nature: Overcoming Abstraction” where Craig gave the reminder of the importance of bringing the world imaginatively to the young child. This simple reminder took root and flowered into this 1st grade puppetry project and has been blooming annually ever since at my school.

This summer I will be teaching a puppetry workshop called Pedagogical Puppetry for Kindergarten, Grades One and Two at the World Association of Puppetry and Storytelling Arts summer conference: The Creative Spirit Within Puppetry Arts - A Collaborative Conference at Hawthorne Valley Waldorf School and Farm July 31st - August 3rd, 2025. We will explore how to meaningfully and successfully bring The Story of the Root Children to 1st grade students as well as other puppetry making and performance projects suitable for these early grades. The conference also offers two other puppetry workshops and a natural dyeing pre-conference plus much, much more .

We hope you can join us!

Jennifer Aguirre has been teaching a Puppetry Grades Curriculum at the Sierra Waldorf School near Sonora, CA since 1998 where, as resident puppeteer, she performs regularly for the kindergartens and school festival life. Jennifer is a founding board member of WAPASA