Buzz into Audience Participation

It's time for scary, or sometimes not so scary, telling.  I've a dog puppet named Buzz because I first dressed him like a Bee for my insect programs.  He helps me talk about how important Bees are and how Yellow Jackets are mistaken for bees.  (There's an Anishinaabe tale about that.)  He also helps with audience participation on many topics.  We often use raffle-style tickets, Buzz picks the selected ticket holder to choose and try to answer a riddle after naming a page in a joke book matching the theme.  I recently found a skeleton outfit and made up a very short audience participation story for young audiences.
My comments below are (inserted) at times and when I ask a question of the audience you will find an underline.

The Colorful Skeleton
There once was a skeleton who drank some Hot Chocolate.  You could see it go all the way down through the skeleton and the color you saw was ___.
But the day was hot enough he wanted something cooler and for healthy bones, so he drank (milk) and the color you saw was ___.
When next he wanted a drink it was even hotter, so he drank some Lemonade and the color you saw was ___.
(Show a Lemon-lime Kool Aid package.) After that he tried Lemon-lime Kool Aid and the color you saw was ___.
Still hot and thirsty, he drank Fruit Punch full of cherry and strawberry juice and the color you saw was ___.
He even drank Orange Juice, so of course the color you saw was ___.
But can you guess what was his favorite flavor and color of juice?
(Boo for Booberries.)

You can find outfits easily at Collect Peanuts.com where there are 9" Woodstock outfits, girl outfits for Belle & boy outfits for Snoopy.  Belle's sizes run in 10" and 15", while Snoopy's are 11" or 18".  Buzz wasn't with me when I found the skeleton outfit and really would have been fit better by the larger size.  A mask isn't included, but I took apart a flat skeleton from my local dollar store.  I made sure it wasn't a scary version of a skeleton.  I may add a Trick or Treat bag.

Another outfit resource is Build-a-bear clothing and you can quickly make puppets by using their stuffed animals.  I see they've just added a Husky!

Hmmmm.  I love Huskies and Malamutes and that would save me unstuffing any I already have.  Unstuffing stuffed animals is an easy way to get a puppet.  Over the years I've often written about Puppets and Puppetry.  There are many ideas here about how you can easily use puppets, so you might want to look through those articles.  Here's a look at Buzz in his Bee outfit.

You might also find articles here on Audience Participation worth reading.

Have fun telling this Halloween!