Is it just because I've been reading Cervantes that this strikes me as profound?
I had a 2nd grade student, Anna, who explained to me: "Puppet Has Puppet." The story…
We have been using puppets, to do a role play, in class. The story is a variation on the infamous Little Red Riding Hood. But my collection of puppets doesn't include wolves or little girls or grandmas. So I had the innovative idea of making "costumes" for the puppets, and the kids are loving it. It's a long process, that we're doing every Thursday class.
So there are some side-characters, not part of the classic folktale but included in this version, including a Snail and a Butterfly that Little Red Riding Hood meet on her way through the forest. We were trying to solve the problem of which puppets would "play" these two roles and we made some cut-outs of cloth to represent the Snail and the Butterfly. Then Anna attached the two cut-outs to a wombat-puppet's "hands" and announced her breakthrough observation: "puppet has puppet."
Brilliant.
Here's a picture I snapped – in the staffroom (in front of the distracting bulletin board – sorry) – of the wombat puppet with snail and butterfly puppets attached to its hands. The snail is on the left, the butterfly is on the right. The wombat is wearing a "dress" (more like a cape) because it also plays the role of grandma.