2018 marks the 10th year of the Giant Puppet Project at Mountainside Elementary School (MES) on Fort Carson. Concrete Couch works with the students to design and build a marionette puppet that is based on a favorite children's book. The most recent project, inspired by The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister, is now installed at Library 21c.
The project involves kids from military families, their parents and siblings, and community volunteers. It is designed to boost literacy skills, has a pre-engineering element, and is just plain fun! Kids ages 6 - 10 are involved in the 11-day experience. The installations are up at MES for one year, and each puppet has about eight different moving parts! For the installation at Library 21c, Rainbow Fish was simplified to be a non-moving sculptural piece.
Sponsors of the program include the Bee Vradenburg Foundation, Joseph Henry Edmondson, El Pomar and Quail Roost Foundations, the Hillsdale and Alpenglow Funds, Colorado Industrial Recyclers, the Habitat for Humanity ReStore, and Barb and David Winter.
Special thanks go to the many volunteers who assist in this and other Concrete Couch projects. You guys are the bomb!
~The Staff at Concrete Couch