Passing Messages

How Messages Travel and Change

Children explore how messages change as they are passed between people and through different forms of media.

Learning outcomes

  • Type
    Type
    Storytelling
  • Competencies
    Competencies
    • Understanding that messages can be shared through different people and media
    • Recognising that messages can change during transmission
    • Developing sequencing and storytelling skills
    • Communicating ideas and cooperating in a group
    • Experiencing shared storytelling across generations
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    Target group
    structure.template.345 years and up
    • Small groups
      Mixed group (children together with parents or grandparents)
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    Required materials
    • Simple puppets or hand-made characters (paper, socks, or cardboard)
    • Stage or table for the puppet performance
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    Materials
    • Story cards showing different stages of message transmission (e.g. bird → child → friend → television)
Passing Messages

Print version

Description of the activity (step by step)

Preparation:

Begin with a simple whisper game (telephone game).

Tell a short sentence to one child (for example: "The red cat is jumping on the table"). The child whispers it to the next child, and so on, until the last child says the sentence out loud.

Compare the first and the final version of the message.

Explain that messages often change when they are passed from one person to another. This can also happen when messages travel through different media.

Implementation:

Talk with the children about how messages can travel:

  • From person to person
  • Through different media (for example: talking, photos, videos, television)

Invite the children to create simple puppets representing different characters.

In small groups, children invent their own short "message journey". For example:

  • A child tells something to a friend
  • The friend tells it to someone else
  • The story appears in another form (for example as a drawing, a video, or a performance)

The children then create and perform a short puppet show showing how the message travels and changes.

Reflection:

Invite the children to reflect on the activity:

  • What happened to the message in the whisper game?
  • Did it stay the same or did it change?
  • What happened in your puppet story?
  • Why do messages sometimes change?

You can also ask:

  • What happens when a story is told in a different way (for example, spoken vs. shown in a picture)?

Variations and additional ideas

Turn the story into a sequence of drawings or a comic strip.

Combine the puppet show and collage: record the performance and include selected photographs in the collage.

Create a "message journey map" showing how one story appears in different media (spoken, written, recorded).

Background information and didactical perspective

This activity helps children understand how stories and messages are transmitted through different forms of media and across generations. It encourages creative storytelling while also showing how messages can change depending on who tells them and through which medium they are shared. The puppet show supports the development of sequencing skills, communication, and empathy. Through play and creativity, children develop an understanding of the dynamic nature of media and the shared human experience of storytelling.