A fun thing for children can be to either watch or put on a puppet show. While there are elaborate puppets and elaborate puppet stands, those aren’t needed for children to have fun. All that is needed is an area such as a table where a child or adult can be beneath it and have a table cloth hiding and the puppets can be lifted above the table. This type of puppet show and these types of puppets can be easily made.
What You Will Need:
Paper
Pencils
Pens
Markers
Crayons
Scissors
Thick wooden craft sticks
Glue (school glue or a glue stick)
Heavy books (optional)
Table
Table cloth
Duct tape or Masking tape (optional)
Instructions:
Design the puppets on the pieces of paper. Puppets are usually about four or five inches high and two or three inches wide. It is fine to estimate the measurements of the puppets. Draw the outline with pencil at first. If you’d like, trace the pencil lines with pen so they are darker and more permanent.
Once the puppets are designed, it is time to color them so they are not bland. Let children color them with the makers and crayons however they would like. The adults should also join in with decorating puppets. The ideas for puppets are limitless. They can be any type of person or any type of animal.
If you can’t think of ideas for puppets, a few are a clown, a police, a dog, a firefighter, an elderly woman, a cat, a doctor, and a child. If you need more, think of more type of puppets.
Once the puppets are colored, let the adults and children that are old enough to handle scissors cut the puppets out along the outside lines so the characters are still in tact.
Once all the puppets are cut out of the paper, put some glue on one end of a craft stick for each puppet. Press the back of the puppet against the glue on the craft stick. Push the puppet down into the glue so that it sticks. You can choose to put a heavy book on top of the area where the puppet and the glue on the stick are so that it should stick better.
Let the glue dry so the puppets are stuck to the sticks.
You will now have puppets, but you might not have a puppet show theater.
All you need is a table that is high and wide enough to hide behind, but also low enough to reach the puppets over the top. If you want to make a puppet show theater where the puppeteers are hidden, use a table cloth. One of the cheap table cloths that you can buy from the dollar store is a good option for this.
Make sure that one side of the table cloth touches the ground and put the rest up onto the top of the table. If the table cloth easily rests, you can leave it like that. This way the puppeteers can hide behind the table cloth and hold the puppets by their sticks and hold them above the table to put on a puppet show.
If the table cloth does not stay like this, you can use masking tape or duct tape to keep it in place. Then the puppet show can begin.
