Hand Puppets

FAMILY MOMENT MONDAY
Do you have pieces of old fabric laying around your house? Maybe some old socks with no match? What about activity hungry kids that would love more one on one time with their parents?

What?! You do?

Well, then.... I've got a Family Moment Monday for you...... putting on a family show! I will give quick easy explanations and issue lists you will need for hand, sock, and stick puppets.

Hand Puppets
Fabric
Items for face features (buttons, beans, googly eyes, more fabric, permanent marker, puff balls, yarn for hair... really anything)
Paper & Pen for tracing
Scissors
Glue Gun
Needles & thread for sewing together if no sewing machine OR use fabric glue

First go through your house and find all the scraps of fabric that you can find. If you don't have any fabric... you can head over to Joann's and they sell pre-cut fabric of all kinds for a decent price, if you are just wanting to run in and grab a bunch of sheets. Have every one trace their hands, but make sure that all their fingers are pressed together EXCEPT the pinkie and thumb, have those sticking out for future arms.

Then use the hand tracing to cut the fabric out (the puppets body). Now everyone can spend time decorating their puppets with eyes, hair, ears, hooves, or whiskers. Once everyone is done then the bodies can be sewn together by hand, machine or glued together.

Sock Puppets
Socks
Fabric
Items for face features (buttons, beans, googly eyes, more fabric, permanent marker, puff balls, yarn for hair... really anything)
Scissors
Glue Gun
Marker

Place the sock on your hand, using your thumb and hand to make the mouth. Now with a marker, mark where you want the eyes, tongue, ears and so forth. You can now take the sock off and start gluing all the items on. Simple.... don't you just love that!? :)

Stick Puppets
Popsicle sticks
Markers, crayons, colored pencils
Glue
Paper

Get some images that can be colored in or have people draw their own pictures. You can even go online and find some fun cartoon people that you can print off and have them color. But... have every one draw/color/ cut out all their drawings. Once this is done then simply glue the images on the sticks.

So there you go.... three different ways to make puppets. This is a real fun activity because you can either spend a fun evening making puppets or you can have the kids spend their afternoon making puppets sweat-shop-style. (this is nice especially since kids are now home during these loooong summer days) . So, when dad gets home they can put a fun show on for the parents. You can have real fun with this by making puppets that look like each family member or of animals to tell a farm tale, biblical characters for a bible story, or fairy tale puppets for fun 3 little pig stories. There are endless possibilties, so have fun. :)

And rememeber... if you are participating in Family Moment Monday, then go ahead and add your URL to Mr. Linky here :)