This website is the new and improved home of Mrs. Muncy’s Musical Menagerie. Who is Mrs. Muncy you might ask? She is Becky Muncy, an award-winning musician and an elementary school music teacher in Bedford, Indiana. In addition to teaching music at school, she teaches character education through music, and the use of puppets.

Mrs. Muncy created a character education CD for children titled Blueprints for Life, which was produced by Matt Wilder in Nashville, Tennessee. Due to its educational and catchy tunes, it won a 2005 Children’s Music Web Award. It was in 2005 that she also went to England on a teacher’s grant to study puppetry, which helped her bring the characters from her Blueprints for Life CD to life in the classroom.

If you’re going to teach with puppets, you have to give them personality, so we have a whole cast of characters to help with the teaching process. The main characters are the Professor who is the helping hand and loves to learn, Merlock the Mouse that spends every waking moment trying to solve mysteries of things around her that she doesn’t understand, T-TAPPN who loves to move to the beat and find ways to learn through music, and Pinniped the Seal who loves music and fish. All of these characters appear in her class every day to help as a teaching tool, and have been doing so for over 10 years!

Here’s a more in-depth look at our characters:

 Professor:

He is very intelligent, but a bit lacking in common sense. He teaches chemistry and math at a High School in a town called Aria. The professor’s favorite hobby is inventing products to help others – skin cream, shampoo, and cleaning products. He had a mishap while inventing skin cream that turned his skin green. Later, a shampoo mishap turned his hair purple, which turned out to be quite the combination!

Merlock:

Meredith Holmes Merlock, better known as Merlock the Mouse, is a freshman in high school. Her Mother, Martha Mouse teaches literature at the High School where the Professor works. Merlock loves mysteries and solving puzzles! Her favorite character, book. and movie is Sherlock Holmes. Merlock has red hair, which is always kept in a pony tail so it doesn’t get in the way if she has to look for clues. She was smitten with steampunk, and likes the idea of making things out of parts and pieces since it’s so similar to a puzzle.

T-TAP’N:

Talitha Tappin better known as– T-TAP’N or “T” for short, is a petite multi-legged bug that loves to dance. “T” is in the 11th Grade at the High School where the Professor teaches. T’TAPN has taken dance lessons since she was 4 years old, and her favorite dance form is tap dancing. She is the captain of the dance team at school who is always great at helping her classmates recognize their strengths.

Pinniped:

Pinniped is a white seal who became the professor’s pet after his studies brought him to the Antarctic. Pinniped loves to play ball, and his favorite meal is fish. The Professor has a temperature-controlled room with a pool built in his house for Pinniped to swim in.