How To Make Fun and Easy Puppets For The Classroom

How can I make puppets for my classroom inexpensively?

The best puppets for classroom productions are generally ones that children can put their little hands into or could imagine themselves playing with. As school classes are small and intimate playrooms, it is likely the children will want to touch puppets after a production—or even become puppeteers themselves.

My suggestion is making puppets that small hands can work almost as well as your hands can work. Granted, this does not mean that if you have a puppet master in your midst—one who can work everything from marionettes to large foam puppets—that you should negate such a tremendous talent.

This article is mainly for the novice puppeteers and those working with limited budgets who have decided to give making puppets a whirl.

For this, we recommend the most cost-conscious product you can find in a craft store: felt. Felt is easy to cut, easy to sew, easy to use with a hot glue gun. It is easy to make little arms and distinctive faces using felt.

By following the steps below, you can fashion any puppet that will fit over the average adult hand.

Creating felt puppets

Materials needed:

• Sections of felt meeting the following criteria:
• Large enough for you to spread your hand across plus two inches
• In various colors you need to make the characters you want
• Black and white to create eyes
• Scissors
• Plain white printer paper
• Buttons
• Yarn or other material for hair

Making your pattern:

• Take four pieces of printer paper and scotch tape them together, two on top, two underneath.
• Lay the big piece on a table horizontally.

1. Spread your hand across a sheet of white printer paper laid horizontally on the table in front of you.
2. Add a half-inch on either side, and this should be the width of your puppet, including its arms. You are adding the half-inch because you want the puppets little arms to be able to meet in front so it can put its hands together. This takes an approximate inch more of fabric. 5. Measure from the top of your middle finger with your hand still spread down to two inches below your wrist, and this should be the height of your puppet.
3. Draw out the shape of the puppet you want. Remember that some animals have ears, and you want to draw them on. You may be able to find a pattern on the Internet that you can download and adapt in size to fit your dimensions. If not use rulers to help draw straight lines and round objects to help draw circles.
4. Cut out the pattern when finished.

Making your Puppet

1. Pin two pieces of felt together that are big enough to meet your dimensions for making the body. Make sure the colors are accurate for the puppet you want to make. For example, sheep are white, fish are orange, etc. (I will go into detail in the next section about the puppets for Puppet Power!)
2. Pin the pattern to the front of the felt and trace around.
3. Cut out the felt along the edge of the pattern.
4. With either a needle and thread or a hot glue gun, attach the back of the puppet to the front.
5. Put your hand in and make sure the arms are wide enough to meet in front of you like little hands. 6. Repeat to make as many puppets as you want.

Decorating your puppets

Here is where you can become very creative. Feel free to let your imagination—and whatever interesting things exist in your sewing basket or junk drawer—have full reign.

If you have limited crafting talents, do not worry; what will make your puppet come alive for the children has more to do with your voice, your acting, your practicing!

Clothing: A magic marker can be used to make things like the lines of clothing. If you’re more ambitious, you can cut more felt to shape the clothes that you want. Or you can cut up old jeans and t-shirts to make clothing look more authentic.

You can also make spots on animals; for example, cows have black spots, frogs have yellow spots, etc. Glue them on with a glue gun.

Eyes: Buttons make great eyes, as do small white circles of felt combined with smaller circles of black felt. You glue the smaller black circle in the center of the white circle, then glue the eye on the puppet.

Also, you can buy ready-made eyes for rag dolls and puppets very reasonably at your nearest craft store. Google eyes also work great.

Mouths: The best mouths on puppets feature an expression of surprise. An open mouth, in other words. This is because puppets bear all sorts of emotions.

A crying puppet wearing a smile will not be believable. A puppet that always wears a frown will not go over well while laughing. In dog and cat puppets, little tongues can hang down.

For others, one trick is to place a small red half circle on a slightly larger black half-circle. The flat part should be on top. Glue them together and then glue them on the puppet. It will look like an open mouth with a tongue, slightly happy, which is appropriate for children.

Pipe cleaners can be used for mouths and eyebrows. Always have a supply of pipe cleaners on hand.

Yarn Hair: People who have sewing machines often rely on yarn for hair. Yarn can easily be manipulated for a wig by laying inch-long pieces side by side over a strip of felt. A two-inch strip of felt will fit around thirty pieces of yarn side by side. Run a hot glue gun over the top; let it saturate and dry.

Glue the hair on the puppet by the strip and cut the yarn to the shape you want. Or take around thirty pieces six inches long and braid it. Put the middle of the braid to the top of the puppet’s head, and either glue or sew it in place. Viola, the puppet has two braids.

Felt Hair: Felt can be cut into the shape of the haircut you want and you can add dimension but adding lines with markers on light hair and with white or gold pens on dark hair.

Feathers For Hair Feathers also make great hair and add a little movement to the puppet. Only a few maribou or similar feathers will add greatly to your puppet. Every movement makes the hair move slightly, creating life.

Other things: Add spectacles by using a pipe cleaner. Add scales to reptiles using a marker pen and some glitter. Put Velcro on the palms of puppet’s hands if you think they will need to hold a prop of some sort. Put the other Velcro piece on the prop, and the prop will stay.

Important note about faces: Whatever you use to make faces, be sure that the pieces are secure. A puppet can lose a button in a show, and a child may only shrug. If he loses an eye or his mouth, children may become alarmed and wonder if the puppet is hurt.

Be sure to check out my RESOURCES PAGE for the materials you need. CLICK HERE