We all love to tell the nursery rhyme, Pat a Cake, Pat a Cake Baker's Man to our very little ones. We feel a warm kinship with him and often we sing it when baking with the young ones. It is delightful to bring this nursery rhyme in puppetry too. I have used finger puppet bakers, table puppet bakers, my favorite, the rod puppet baker, and the more elegant marionette baker. Over the years as I have studied Steiner's '12 Professions', I found direction for going deeper into the meaningful gestures and ensoulment of the Baker puppet and every worker character that arose in stories.
Thinking of the 12 Professions as Soul Powers within us, we can ponder the Baker bestowing us with our spirit powers, inner strengths of Transformation. Lifting the ordinary into something Golden. With the Nursery Rhyme baker, how we enliven this character in puppetry, would just have a whisper of this insight for the youngest children. For children Birth to 7 we can show interest in his work, care in his gestures, putting (patting) Love into his cake. See how confidently he works as he honors his skills and wants only the best for his customers.
All of these gestures, inward and outward, including the ones we hold in ourselves as puppeteers of the True Baker, all of this visually taken in by the children become soul seeds for their inner life.
We can commit and have inner intention to bring our worker characters more meaningfully. The first step is to become aware of what lives in the Baker and the other workers, we cultivate our own inner imagination with insight. Just think of how this approach to your puppet shows will give such valuable gifts to the children watching. And notice in free play how they will imitate your baker puppet with all the tender care that you showed them.
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Learn more about the 12 Professions in our Holy Night course on Finding Your Noble Selves, inspired by Steiner's guides to these 12 Professions. CLICK HERE
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