Puppets Pull Students’ Strings With Health Messages

Lime-green Evil the Weevil’s scooter screeched across the Van Gogh Elementary School auditorium Thursday, with the Weevil proudly proclaiming he was too hip to wear a helmet or a seat belt. The reckless varmint said true daredevils never wear them.

Then he crashed his scooter, became a seat-belt convert and launched into the “Buckle Up Boogie.”

The lesson to 200 kindergarten through third-grade students: Seat belts are good.

Feather-haired, fluorescent Nikki Teen smoked to be cool.

With advice from the eager audience, she realized that smoking does not make a person or a puppet look sophisticated.

Evil the Weevil and Nikki Teen are two of several life-sized puppets in Professor Bodywise’s Traveling Menagerie, which sings and dances health and safety lessons in Southern California elementary schools.

Screams greeted “Nutri-Beast,” puppeteered by Jill Remez, as he darted through the aisles rejoicing in his new energy, a result of healthy food.

“Nutri-Beast was my favorite. I loved the way he jumped around,” said Andrew Weaver, 7. “And I love apples. I eat them all the time.”

Rick Burke, director of the Health Education Theater Programs for Kaiser Permanente, said the puppets were dreamed up in 1984 in Cleveland.

“We’re committed to prevention education,” Burke said. “We want to get the message to kids before they make mistakes.”

The Granada Hills school had been on the waiting list a year before Thursday’s performance, Principal Maureen Diekmann said. She said she heard about the program through a parent.

“Topics like body awareness can be very academic and dry,” she said. “It’s a very good instructional tool to use something as motivational as these puppets.”

Health education specialists say the puppets are not intended as a substitute for classroom nuts and bolts.

“This is just frosting on the cake,” said Ruth Rich, health education specialist for the school district. “The children see and hear the message, but teachers need to reinforce the behavior by role-modeling.”

There are also role models in the home--though not often enough, Rich said.

Nikki Teen upset at least one student in Paula Himmelstein’s kindergarten class. She said the 5-year-old was distressed because both her parents smoke and the life-sized puppet’s message was clear: “Smoking is not cool.” She wanted to save her parents from hurting themselves but did not know how. The program did not discuss how to deal with those issues, Himmelstein said.

The hit of the show was a tiny, Spanish-speaking puppet named Mumferd. The children sat on the edge of their seats straining to hear the soft-spoken character tell them not to cook while they were home alone because he got hurt that way.

“He got all burned up, but he was so cute,” said Lauren Park, 6. “I hope he feels better.”