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How To Make A Puppet Mouth

Written by admin in Arm&Rod Puppets,How To

The mouth of a puppet must be strong to ensure your puppet will hold up to continued use. The shape of the mouth defines the character of a puppet.

To make a great puppet mouth, you will need:

  • A pattern
  • Foam Core Board or other thin strong material
  • Contact cement or spray adhesive
  • Felt for the inside of the mouth
  • Cloth for the inside of the puppet
  • Foam or elastic for finger tubes
  • Craft foam for teeth and tongue
  • Gaffers tape to connect mouth plates

Your Pattern

All great puppets start with a well-built mouthpiece. This will consist of top and bottom plates that are hinged together with gaffer’s tape or duct tape.

If you buy a puppet pattern, it will include the pattern for the mouth plates. If you make your own pattern for the puppet, you will also need to make a mouth pattern.

Once you have assembled your head, you can place cardboard or craft paper inside the mouth where your mouth plates will go. Trace the shape of the mouth and you have a pattern.

If you don’t have a head pattern and are building up your puppet head from the mouth, you can easily make a pattern. Take a square of craft paper and fold it into quarters.

Draw a quarter circle on the paper and cut out. This will give you a circular or oblong shape when unfolded. Cut the shape in half and you will have your top and bottom patterns.

You can then trim one of the pieces to make an underbite or overbite. This will add character to your puppet. You may also just leave them identical for a more symmetrical mouth.

Cut Out Your Mouth Plates

Mouth plates cut out of foam core.

I usually use foam core board for my mouth plates. It is rigid, yet light and easy to cut to shape.

Other materials you can use for your mouthplate include corrugated plastic like they make signs out of, plywood and rubber gasket. Some puppet builders use cardboard, but in my opinion, cardboard is a horrible choice. It can break down so quickly and overs little strength to your build.

You can also use plastic from storage tubs or plastic coffee can lids.

Trace your pattern onto the foam core, or whatever material you are using. Foam core can be cut with scissors or a razor blade. Always mark the center point of both plates on the edge. This will help align the mouth when you attach it to the puppet.

Connect The Top And Bottom Plates

You will use gaffer’s tape or duct tape and fabric to hinge the mouth plates.

When attaching the top and bottom plates, leave about a 1/4″ gap between the pieces. This will leave room for the felt you will place inside the mouth later. It also allows better movement of the mouth.

Lay the pieces out flat, with your gap and apply a piece of tape across. Then fold the mouth shut and tape the other side.

You must have the mouth closed when you add the tape to the part of the mouth that will be inside the puppet. If you leave it flat when you tape, the mouth will not close properly.

Mouth plates covered with denim. Notice the gap between the two plates.

Once you have the plates taped, you will want to cover the mouth plates with fabric. I like to use denim from old jeans, but Tshirt cloth or any other material will work.

Spray the part of the mouth that will be inside the puppet with spray adhesive. With the mouth closed, wrap your fabric over the mouth and let dry.

Once the glue has dried, you can trim the edges of the cloth evenly with the edge of the mouth. This layer of cloth makes a stronger mouth and also protects the foam core from sweaty hands.

Apply The Inside Of The Mouth

Adding the material which will be the inside of your puppet’s mouth is easy.

Spray the inside of the mouth with spray adhesive. Place this on a square of felt that will be the inside of the mouth.

After the glue has dried, trim around the edge of the mouth and voila, you have a perfect mouth.

Attach Finger Tubes Or Elastic Bands

Finger Tubes

Finger tubes can be made out of foam. Make a tube from a piece of foam about 1″ wide and 5 ” long. The length of the strip will depend on the size of your fingers.

Place two tubes side by side on the top of the mouth. These should be glued together and glued to the mouth plate.

When using this set-up, the puppeteer puts his/her first and third fingers in the tubes and the middle finger on top of the tubes.

Put another tube on the bottom plate for your thumb. This tube will usually be a little bigger than the finger tubes.

Finger Straps

Instead of the tubes, you may decide to place straps across the top of the puppet mouth. 1″ elastic works great for this.

Attach the elastic band to the top of the mouth with contact cement. The band should be slightly longer than the width of the mouth. You do not want the strap flat across the mouth plate. Rather, you want a slight gap to slide the fingers in.

You may also use an elastic band on the bottom plate. for the thumb.

As an alternative, you may decide to use a strip of foam for your top strap. Make it loose enough to easily slide in your hand, but tight enough to give a good grip. The foam will have some stretch and should fit tight.

The advantage to straps of foam or elastic is that puppeteers with various size hands can use the puppet. On a custom build, this is especially wise. Your customer probably does not want a puppet with finger tubes sized for your fingers, unless they have the same size hand.

Leather and Plywood.

Some builders make their mouthplates out of craft plywood. This is the thin birch wood sold for model airplane building.

Once the plate is cut out, leather straps are cut for the top and bottom plates. Holes are drilled and the straps attached with rivets. The plates are hinged together with a strip of leather. This makes a very strong mouthplate.

Strengthen Mouth With Fabric

Thumb tube glued in place and covered with cloth.

Once you have your finger tubes in place, Spray adhesive over the top of the mouth and lay a stretchy fabric, like a T-shirt over the top. This will help keep everything in place and give you a very durable mouth.

T-Shirts can be bought very cheaply at a yard sale or thrift store. The cotton material works great for this step. You can also use scrap fleece.

MAKE A LONG-LASTING MOUTHPLATE WITH SCULPT OR COAT® To make a long-lasting mouthplate for your puppet, cover the finger tubes and entire mouthplate with a stretchy fabric. T-Shirts work great for this. THEN apply a thin layer of Sculpt or Coat®. Make sure the Sculpt or Coat® soaks into the fabric. This will triple its strength for a long-lasting mouth mechanism.

Puppet Teeth
Puppet teeth and tongue made from craft foam.

Add A Tongue

To add a tongue to the inside of your puppet’s mouth, cut a heart shape from felt or craft foam. Round the bottom of the heart. This can be attached with spray adhesive or contact cement.

You can also carve a tongue out of a piece of soft foam. This can then be colored with a sharpie marker.

Add Teeth

You may or may not want to add teeth. Teeth can be carved out of 1/2″ or 1/4″ foam or cut out of craft foam. If using craft foam to make the teeth, glue a piece of 1/4″ foam on the back of the teeth. This will give you a place to put glue to glue the teeth to the inside of the mouth.

For detailed instructions on making puppet teeth, see my article HERE.

Attach The Mouth To The Puppet Head

You can use hot glue or contact cement to attach the mouth to the puppet.

To attach the mouth, line up the center of the mouth with the center of the puppet. Attach the mouth here first. Then, you can work the puppet foam around the edge of the mouth, lining it up as you go.

Depending on the look you want, the mouth plates can be glued to the inside edge of the foam head or flat onto the 1/2″ edge of the foam. I prefer to place it on the inside and leave a little lip area. This is personal preference, though.

If you enjoyed the article, please comment below. Thank you.

Puppet Training – Learn the 5 Basic Skills for Great Puppetry

Written by Dennis Regling in Puppetry,Uncategorized

Good puppetry requires mastery of basic puppeteering skills. Proper handling of your puppet during a show will create life and believability. This will create a more interesting and memorable program for your audience. Great puppeteering is engaging and fun to watch. Poorly handled puppets are not.

The five basics to puppeteering are:

  • Entrances and Exits
  • Height & Position
  • Lip Synchronization
  • Eye Contact
  • Believable Actions

Entrances and Exits

The first important basic of puppetry is entrances and exits. A puppet should appear to walk up on stage just as a person would.

If you start your puppet towards the back of the stage, held low, and gradually raise the height while moving the puppet to the front of the stage, it will appear to be entering from afar. This is very natural.

If you just have the puppet pop up at the front of the stage, that is weird. Very unnatural.

The puppet can also come in from the side, raising it one little hop at a time as if climbing stairs. With each little bounce, the puppet will finish “one step” higher. You can exit the same way, wiht the puppet going lower with each bounce.

The bounces should not be large but should convey the idea the puppet is taking steps. Unless you are Neil Armstrong, on the moon or Tigger of Winnie The Pooh fame, you should not be bouncing high when you walk.

Always put a little hop in the movement to create the illusion that the puppet is taking steps.

Older puppets will move without a lot of bounce while younger puppets will move a little faster and bouncier. Lots of energy is what a little girl or boy should have. Not all puppets enter the same way.

Animals move differently than humans do. So animal puppets should move differently than human puppets. Animals will be bouncy, if they are puppies and move slowly if they are larger animals.

Strange entrances and exits like elevators, escalators and trap doors are distracting and detract from your performance. Your entrances and exits need to look like entrances and exits. Anything else is just bad puppetry. The only exception to this is if the elevator, trap door or escalator is pertinent to your script or the puppet’s personality.

Height And Positioning

The next basic is height and positioning.

If the puppet is too low, it looks bad and it usually means someone’s arm is getting tired. You need to keep your puppet at the proper height. How high should it be? Belly button level. If the puppet had a belly button, it should be even with the level of the stage. That way we can see the entire puppet.

If the puppet is held too low, you can end up with just a head peeking over the stage. If held too high, the puppeteer’s arm may be exposed. Puppets of the same age should be on the same eye level, as in a child talking to a child. If one puppet is older, like a grandfather to a child, the younger would normally be a little lower.

The puppet should never lean on the stage. It’s distracting. It looks bad. It doesn’t allow them to move their arms and the stage could fall. Try to keep the puppet about a foot back from the front of the stage.

Tired arms are usually the reason for leaning the puppet against the stage. I know I have been guilty of this. Regular rehearsal and exercise will help you strengthen your arms and hold the puppet up longer. Good arm strength is important to good puppeteering.

Knowing how quickly arms can tire when puppeteering, there are a few things you can do to help your team.

  1. Keep skits short, or work in spots for puppets to exit the stage and return later.
  2. When lip-syncing to music, keep the songs short. A one to two-minute song is great, but a four-minute song or longer can be grueling.
  3. Upbeat music can allow the puppet to move around more. Even when holding the puppet up, the ability to move the arm around and even up and down a little helps prevent fatigue.
  4. Use appropriate size puppets. Larger puppets are heavier and wear out your arm quicker. Adults can use large heavy puppets, but children may not be able to. My 9-year-olds prefer a 14″ puppet with no foam in the body. They are light and easy to use. My wife and I use larger 20″ puppets, but even then, my wife often switches to a lighter puppet to do songs.

Lip Synchronization

Our next basic is lip synchronization or lip-sync correct. Lip Sync is opening a mouth one time for each syllable.

Lip sync or lip synchronization is moving the bottom jaw for each syllable. The mouth is closed before the word begins and that it stays closed when the word is finished. Don’t leave your mouth open or you will bite your words. You need to open your mouth on the syllables. Not Close it.

Avoid flipping the lid. When puppet speaks, we should drop the lower jaw and keep the head stationary. People talk by moving the lower jaw, not the upper pops.

One way to control the movement of the top of the head is to place your middle finger on top of your index finger inside the puppet. Try it now without a puppet and move your hand as if a puppet is speaking. Notice how the upward movement is naturally restricted by this hand placement.

Do you always open your mouth the same amount when you speak? No question here. I move my mouth a lot more when I yell. Your mouth movements need to be appropriate to the words that you are saying.

For yelling or laughing, the mouth should be wide open. For normal talk, about half way and only a slight opening for whispering.

Eye Contact

Proper eye contact is looking where you’re supposed to. You have to see who you’re speaking at. Focus on the audience. The eyes will be pointed down at the audience if the audience is lower than the puppet stage. You don’t want to be staring at the ceiling. When two puppets are on stage together, they need to look at each other and the audience.

When one puppet is speaking, the other puppet should be looking at them. The puppet doing the speaking will be looking at the audience. When the non-speaking puppet looks at the speaking one, this cues the audience to also look at the speaker.

If the speaking puppet is looking at the non-speaker and the non-speaking is looking at the audience, the audience will be subconsciously drawn to look at the one facing them.

Believable Action And Movement

The fifth and final basic is believable action and movement.
Believable action is bringing your puppets to life. Everything your puppet does should be believable and he should look alive. Keep your movements very expressive.

You can throw back the head and open the mouth wide to laugh or hang the head down to show sadness. Looking up and away can signal the puppet is being evasive and avoiding answering a question.

Arm rods allow a puppet to point or clap. The puppets we build also have articulated hands that can hold props. Hand and arm movement can convey information and emotion.

One of the keys to bringing life to your puppet is to keep moving. Don’t stand still like a statue. A nonmoving puppet is a dead puppet. Little nods of the head while listening to the other puppet speak, or slight movements keep the puppet alive. A dead puppet is very distracting.

So those are the five basics to good puppeteering. Be sure to share them with your team and be sure to practice them every time you pick up a puppet.

If you want hands-on training for your puppet team, I am available to come to your church.

If you enjoyed this article, be sure to comment below and please share. Thank you.

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How To Create Life With Your Puppets: Puppet Manipulation

Written by Dennis Regling in How To,Puppetry,Uncategorized

There are many simple ways that you can incorporate puppets into your classroom lessons or your library storytime.

When you’re presenting with a puppet, go ahead and just say it’s a puppet. If you don’t very young children, in particular, in the audience will probably interrupt you repeatedly to ask if the character is real, since they’re developmentally working on what is real and what is pretend in their day to day world.

Older kids will also try to impress you with how smart they are by yelling out, “It’s a puppet,” as if you didn’t know it wasn’t a real rabbit or whatever.

If you just introduce the puppet as a puppet, it won’t make it any less real or less magical for your audience.

At the same time, embrace and really believe in your puppets. While you’re manipulating it, you treat it lovingly and realistically, it will be much more enjoyable for the audience as well as for you.

Watch the puppet while you’re animating it, whether you’re hidden from or visible to the audience. If you’re visible and the audience can see you, and they see you watching the puppet, they will then watch the puppet. The audience is going to look where you are looking.

You might glance out at the audience from time to time to kind of gauge their response and include them in the conversation, but avoid competing directly with your puppet, unless you’ve orchestrated some kind of comical puppet versus puppeteer competition.

I’m watching the puppet while animating. It is also going to enable you to monitor the puppet’s movements and believability.

One of the most common types of hand puppet is structured so that you move its entire head as a unit and you can also move its two arms or paws.

Hand puppets
Simple hand Puppets Can Be Quite Engaging

Its mouth does not open and close. Your hand goes up into the puppet with your three middle fingers in it. One finger in each of the arms and one in the head.

What you’ll be able to do is make the puppet tilt its head. You can make it rub its eyes, you can make it scratch its neck.

Many of these different motions can be made internally. You can manipulate internally for the puppet.

Some puppets might have a tail or something that you want to manipulate and that would have to be done externally.

One of the most important points to remember with all hand puppets is that effective eye contact between the puppet and the audience is absolutely essential.

You know, think about how disturbing it is when you’re talking with a real person and they’re not looking at you while they’re talking with you. The same situation is true with the puppet.

You need to make certain that your puppet is making intentional eye contact with people in the audience. You know, looking from person to person.

If your audience is sitting down on the floor and you’re up on a chair with the puppet or standing with the puppet, you might need to angle the puppet face downward to look at the audience.

Since you’re going to be watching the puppet a lot while you’re animating it, you should be able to monitor the eye contact that they’re making with the audience.

The other most common type of hand puppet is a puppet with an articulated or movable mouth, similar to a Muppet.

Foam head puppet
arm and rod puppet

Again, it takes practice to become skilled and really comfortable manipulating the puppet. But practice really pays off enormously, both in terms of enjoyability and believability.

A common mistake that people make when manipulating puppet mouths is for the puppeteer to just open and close the mouth so that the puppet is kind of eating it’s words rather than speaking them.

Think about what happens when you speak. You essentially open your mouth to let a word or syllable out and then you close your mouth after the word gets out.

The puppet should likewise open its mouth to release the word or syllable and close it. Open it for the next one and so on. That looks more natural.

You’re going to try and move the puppets lower jaw more than the top jaw. The lower jaw is about 70%, and the upper jaw is about 30% or so.

It’s probably going to feel unnatural at first when you start doing that. But again, it will help your puppet maintain eye contact with the audience to move it in that way.

If you’re moving the top jaw too much, the puppet’s head is essentially going to be raring back up and again and again like that. It’s important to move the lower one more than the top to practice.

One trick to help with this is to place your middle finger on top of your index finger inside the puppet. You will find you now have less movement in the top of the mouth and more with the jaw. Perfect!

Try counting to five with your puppet. As the puppet says each number your wrist is going to move gently forward, and your hand opens on the number and then your wrist returns to its original place and your puppet’s mouth is going to close.

Finally, a puppets ability to speak provides you with a really good opportunity to give him or her a character voice. It can help define that puppet’s personality. It can help maintain the audience’s interest if you do give the puppet a particular voice, however, you really need to be able to maintain it.

It’s so confusing for an audience to watch and listen to a puppet that has two completely different voices.

Often moving move puppets will have rods attached to the puppet’s arms to allow the puppeteer to move the arms. This will take practice but will result in a much more lifelike puppet.

Puppets often seem to take on a life of their own. A good puppeteer just tries to help the puppet come to life for the audience on, remember that the audience will really love it if you embrace your characters and present them with abandon because it’s not about you, the puppeteer, it is about your audience.

Puppet Ministry
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How To Make Fun and Easy Puppets For The Classroom

Written by admin in How To

Easy Puppet Featured Image

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.

Simple felt puppets

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
Sample hand puppet
Sample Of What Your Pattern Should Look Like

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.
Lion hand puppet
Lion hand puppet

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

Puppet Building World
Make Great Puppets

How To Start A Puppet Ministry

Written by Dennis Regling in How To,Puppetry

There are a lot of good reasons to start a puppet ministry. I have discovered it’s a wonderful way to share God’s word and the love of Jesus in a very nonthreatening way.

Puppet ministry is a team dedicated to sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ with your church community and the world using stories, songs, and humor through the art of puppetry.

Starting in a puppet ministry requires a great deal of thoughtful prayer and a willingness to commit your time and energy to a worthy cause.

puppet ministry
A Great Puppet Ministry adds vitality to your children’s services and the adults love them, too.

A good way to start is to sit down, write it out, write out a mission statement. Your mission statement should define why your ministry exists. A good mission statement answers these questions. Who are we? Who do we serve, what do we do and why do we do it? And does this ministry and this mission statement point to God?

Next, you can set your goals and prioritize them. Be realistic about the number of goals that you can work on at one time. Do that for each of your goals.

A great puppet ministry is designed to break down barriers in order to share the gospel and creative ways that appeal to children of all ages.

Of course, someone has to be in charge. So let’s call them the director. What qualities are needed for this position? They must be dedicated to the mission and should pray daily for God’s help and guidance. They need to have a positive attitude. Be willing to research and learn the skills needed to work in this ministry.

In starting a puppet ministry, you have to be very patient, especially when you are teaching the skills or you are learning them yourselves. So a good director will build positive relationships with the entire team and have a mission vision. Now, what are a mission and vision? Well, it can be whatever and however, you would like your ministry to share the love of Jesus with others.

Recruiting Team Members

Envision who to invite and pray for before you approach them. Make your invitation personal. No emails or texting aloud, inspire others, be enthusiastic, answer any questions and tell them why they would be a blessing to the ministry and why the ministry is a blessing and important to many.

When training a team member. Tell the person what is expected. Show them how to accomplish the task and allow them to do the task.
Invest your time and build a relationship with your team members. Schedule and hold regular meetings and encourage whenever you can.

Training Puppet Team Members

Puppet ministry can be super effective. But it’s not enough to just throw a puppet on your arm and go. Like any art, it’s important to study, practice and strive for excellence. Done poorly, it can just be distracting and counter-productive.

Take the time to train new puppeteers how to sync their puppet’s mouth movements to a song or to words they are saying from a script.

A couple of years ago, I did a gospel magic presentation for a church event. Two young ladies from the hosting church did a puppet skit. They were articulate, easy to hear and did a great job lip-syncing with the puppets. BUT when their puppet was not speaking, it was motionless. They had “dead puppets.”

Teach your puppeteers how the puppet show move and where it should look when it is not speaking. Dead puppets kill a show.

Equipment Required

What equipment do you need to start a puppet ministry?

  • several puppets
  • a stage
  • audio equipment
  • puppet scripts
  • music
  • You will need some money and a financial plan.

You can research where to find your puppets and your other items and just search around. You can look on the Internet and you can just have to investigate all of this. What can you afford?

Think of ideas to raise money. How about your church budget? You could accept gifts and donations or you could have an adopt a puppet plan. The adopt a puppet plan allows people in your congregation to select a puppet and name them.

Unique and fun puppets can be purchased from Possum Woods Puppets HERE, as well as other sites online. Puppetbuildingworld.com has instructions for building your own puppets.

Puppet Scripts can be written by you or you can purchase them online. Our RESOURCE PAGE has a couple of great books with scripts I have written and used for our ministry.

Often you can use the church’s sound system, but if you have a traveling ministry or have your puppet ministry in a room without a sound system, you will need to think about amplification. Also, each speaking puppeteer will need his own microphone. If you pre-record your scripts, you can avoid the expense and technical requirements of multiple microphones.

The Amazing Amp comes with two microphones so two puppeteers can use the system. It is inexpensive and will fill a gymnasium with quality sound. It is the system my wife and I have used for the last 4 years and we love it. It also works with Bluetooth so you can run your prerecorded scripts and music straight from your phone or tablet without wires. You can see the Amazing amp on Amazon by clicking HERE.

The next thing you need is a stage.

You need to figure out what size stage will work best for you. How many puppeteers will be behind the curtain? Will you have one curtain or a second one higher in the back?

If you have the stage you need curtains. Commercial curtains can be very expensive. You can buy large, heavy tablecloths very inexpensively and make really nice curtains.

Want to build your own stage and save money? There is a great article at Puppet Building World.

You can also purchase a portable stage if you will have a traveling ministry. These generally cost $300 to $400 dollars. For our ministry, Possum Woods Puppets uses a PVC pipe stage. It breaks down and sets up quickly. It was donated to us 14 years ago and is still going strong.

PVC Pipe Puppet Stage
PVC Pipe Puppet Stage

If you are looking for an inexpensive, simple puppet stage, I like this ONE

Are your wheels turning yet? I hope they are. Maybe a puppet ministry for your church is starting to take some shape.

Your next step is to name your group.

You want to try to come up with a name that will promote your message. Once you select your name, you can create your own tee shirts or shirts and jackets with your name and your church logo on there. If you use artwork, you can use the clip clip art that’s commercially available, to the public online. Do not just lift artwork off the internet. You will probably be violating copyright.

Puppetry Is Theater

You have to always remember that puppetry is good theater. Which puppets will work best for what you’re doing? Does the music fit in with your theme and does it fit with your audience? What’s your message?

We usually start our program with a peppy little, a song or light and funny material, or even a, a knock, knock joke, some kind of a joke. Then we build-up to the point that you want to make. We usually close with a Bible verse, and a song that will bless the audience. That is especially appreciated at the retirement homes and the nursing homes. Nursing homes love puppet teams because it is so helpful to the people who are in there. It brings them great joy in their heart.

When using music, either make sure it is public domain (non-copyrighted) or you will need to pay BMI/ASCAP. Your pastor can help you handle the legal aspects of music in your church. There are several sites online that sell royalty-free music, especially for puppets.

If you want to start a puppet ministry, we are willing to help any church that would like to start in any way that we can. The big thing is pray about it, pray for God’s guidance and pray for his blessings. Remember, God has given each of us our talents. Why? To use for building his kingdom. And it is such a blessing to be able to share his word and his joy and his promises with all those around us.

Contact us at www.winthechildren.com to have my wife and I train you and your people.

Please consider puppetry as a new mission field for your church. Remember, your mission field is all around you.

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Is Puppet Ministry Effective In Our High-Tech World?

Written by Dennis Regling in Puppetry,Uncategorized

Puppet ministry is surprisingly effective and enjoyed in our high tech world. There is always something special about live performance. There is a relationship that happens between the performer and the audience, that no video can have. Puppeteers can ad lib and customize the show to audience response, really bringing a live audience into the show.

Puppets play a huge part in our children’s ministry programs. Children love the puppets and adults enjoy them, too. For many children that join us for Vacation Bible School, the puppet skits and songs are their favorite part.

Puppets used to be the mainstay of children’s television programming, but with the advent of cheap computer animation, puppets have disappeared from most kid’s shows. Having puppets in the church is actually new and refreshing to the younger generation.

Kids are used to computers and video games – won’t they find puppets boring?

Over the past 18 years I have been using puppets, I have discovered just the opposite. Kids are fascinated by these talking stuffed creatures. Mr. Rogers would captivate his audience with the simplest of puppets, while Sesame Street brought a new style puppet to children. Today, still, children just love puppets.

Puppets become real to children and adults. As a figure develops his character he or she becomes a unique individual with unique personality traits and quirks.

You always knew the Cookie Monster was going to gobble things up, whether it be cookies or the shape of the day. Grover was always going to be a bit absurd and Ernie was going to drive Bert crazy.

Over a five-night Vacation Bible School program, children get to know my puppet, Elmer, as a silly boy always getting things confused or aggravating his female cohort, Becky Becky is usually the serious one and Elmer is the instigator.

Elmer, my mischievous boy puppet

The children always yell when Elmer comes on the scene. Although I do Elmer’s voice in our skits, Sometimes my wife does Elmer as a silent puppet. He will pop up behind my back and the kids yell. When I turn around, he disappears. After a few times, I will catch him. Then I ask questions of him, Like, “Did you memorize your Bible verses?”

Elmer answers with head nods and shakes, by looking away, etc. My wife does an excellent job making him come alive without words.

Puppets Grab And Hold The Audience’s Attention

According to Christian Puppeteer Richard Gibson, “People will listen to puppets sometimes when they will not actual people. We have as many adults as kids that have said they want us back to share Christ again. 
I know our team and others that have had people come to alter at the end. We had one show that we had to keep stopping the show 3 times due to people coming to the altar.

Kids listen to puppets
Kids listen to puppets

It plants seeds for God. Which is what most ministries really do. Most of us will not know what God does with things He has used us for in the end. But, I can tell you He is involved. e Bible says if 2 or more gathered, He is there. So if a team is sharing Christ, we have an Audience of ONE and everyone else will get to worship with us. SO YES. I think puppets can reach people. I have seen it.

Think of it this way, Billy Graham and other preachers reach a lot of people just standing behind a pulpit sharing God’s Word. We just do it with Puppets. And less Air Time.
We do have black lights and lighting for a couple of songs in our shows. They enhance the attention. Which goes back to, getting someone to hear us share Christ, Which is what it is all about.“

If your puppets are engaging and animated, your audience will key in on what they are saying. This allows your message to really be heard.

Kids of all ages love puppets

Puppeteer Laura Wray says, “Our ministry team is requested by adults and senior citizens the most. Especially hospitals. They can touch people of all ages. Puppets bring another bridge that some can relate to and bring them to the Lord. We add tech into our performances as well with videos to help enhance and keep attention by continuing to change things up.”

Matthew Chandler adds, “Kids of all ages like puppets. And doing shows live gives you a chance to improv a bit with the audience – something a video can’t do. Plus, I’ve found when I walk around with puppets, not only kids but adults like to put their fingers in my animal puppet’s mouths! “

Puppets Are Fun and Capture Your Audience’s Attention

Yes, people LOVE puppets. They are fun and they are personal. With puppets, the audience can be brought into the show. They feel they are right in the moment. With video, the audience members become mere spectators.

A stage full of puppets creates excitement.

A Stage Full Of Puppets Creates Excitement

Using multiple puppets also creates excitement. The puppets play off each other and create humorous situations. A puppet can pop up and bring surprise or tension or comic relief to a show.

Using multiple puppets can be a great attention grabber. Additionally, you can have a live person interact with the puppets. That is hard to do with video. As I mentioned above, the kids love when I interact with Elmer.

Every Ministry Can Benefit From Adding Puppets

I believe every ministry can benefit from adding puppets. Not just Vacation Bible School or Sunday School, but hospital ministry, nursing home ministry and even ministry to adults.

Puppets are just more characters you can add to your ministry without adding more personnel. I’m not just “Brother Dennis,” I am Elmer, Andy, Grandpa Possum and several other characters. My wife is Becky, Maria, Silent Elmer and multiple animals. Even my 9 year old twins add puppets in the background when we do songs with the puppets.

If you want to bring my family to your church or event, check out our ministry at www.winthechildren.com