The importance of puppet plays to children in disaster preparedness programmes

Loy, Chee Luen

Abstract

In disaster preparedness programmes, puppet plays are an important therapeutic medium for children. Accordingly, this qualitative study was aimed to investigate the importance of puppet plays for children who were enrolled in the said programme. In-depth interviews were conducted on six respondents, two of whom were males included a school head, and a worker from the rehabilitation centre respectively. Meanwhile, the four remaining females included a teacher, two caretakers, and a disaster survivor among the disaster community. Following thematic analysis, it was found that the inclusion of puppet plays in a disaster preparedness programme not only educated nursery, kindergarten, and primary school children on disaster preparedness; they helped reduce the emotional impact caused by such untoward incidents as well. Hence, puppet plays can be useful in psychotherapy for children in such programmes. Keywords: Children, Puppet Play, Disaster Preparedness

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