In this activity, you will learn how to make animal puppets from paper bags! I will show you how to a kitty, but also give you tips and inspiration for how you can turn the elements you make into other animals as well! This is great for children to practice their cutting, gluing, drawing, and painting while using their creativity and making their own puppet that they can play with afterwards! Have hours of fun with puppets you make yourself!
Supplies
1 paper bag
Construction paper
A glue stick
Markers or pencil crayons
Activity Steps:
Before getting started, make sure that you have a clean space to work in and all of your materials ready!
Step 1: To start, place your paper bag vertically (or up and down/hamburger style), on the table where you are working. You don’t need to do anything with it, it is just good to have it nearby so you can use it as a reference for how big you want the different elements of your puppet to be!
Step 2: You can now start to make the different elements, like their eyes, mouth, and nose for your puppet. I want my kitty to have a tummy. I’m using white construction paper, but you can use whatever colour you want to make the tummy! Any animal puppet you make can always have a tummy, so you can use this to make any animal you like, be creative! Make sure your construction paper is facing up and down.
Using a marker or pencil, draw a rectangle that goes about halfway up the paper.
On top of the rectangle, draw half of a circle. You can now cut out the tummy. If you need help with cutting, make sure to ask an adult for help!
Step 3: Now it is time to make the eyes for your cat! You could also use googley eyes if you want! I am going to use two coins to make circles for my eyes. You will need a white and black piece of construction paper! If you do not have black construction paper, you could colour in using black on white paper to make black! You will need a big coin, like a loonie or toonie for the white part of the eye. Then, you can use a small coin like a dime to do the same thing on the black construction and draw another small black circle.
Remember that animals have 2 eyes, so you will need to repeat this step twice! You should have 4 circles in total when you are done drawing!
Step 4: Once you are finished drawing the eyes, it is time to cut out each circle! If you need help with cutting, make sure to ask an adult for help!
Step 5: Now that we are done cutting, glue each of your small black circles to the middle of your big white circles. Once you are done making all of your eyes, you can put them to the side.
Step 6: The next step is to make ears for your cat! To make cat ears, I am going to use pink construction paper, but you can use whatever colour you want! Draw two triangles to make your ears, you can make them as small or as big as you want! A tip for drawing triangles is to draw from the bottom of a page, so you don’t have to worry about making the bottom line of the triangle straight! Triangle ears can be used to make tigers, jaguars, leopards, or lions! Once you are finished drawing, you can cut out the shape and place them to the side. If you need help with cutting, make sure to ask an adult for help!
Step 7: Now it is time to make a nose for your kitty! Again, I am going to use pink construction paper, but you can use whatever colour you want! I am going to use my big coin again to make a big circle nose. Many other animals have circle noses, like monkeys, bears, hamsters, and tigers, see how you can make any animal you want? Once you are finished drawing, you can cut out the shape and place them to the side. If you need help with cutting, make sure to ask an adult for help!
Step 8: The last step is to assemble our cat puppet! To start, make sure your bag is facing the side that has a flap on it. A tip for gluing things that you drew, make sure that you are putting glue on the side where you can see your markings so that you can’t see them once you glue them on! See how on my puppet you can’t see any markings? Glue the tummy onto the middle of the bag, below the flap. Press down for ten seconds to make sure that the tummy stays stuck to the bag! The face will be on the flap of the bag.
Step 9: For the face of your kitty, glue your eyes at the top of the flap in the middle of the bag. You can also add the nose with glue in the middle below the eyes. Hold down everything you glue for ten seconds to make sure they stick! You can also add on any other facial features you want, be creative! For example, I added eyebrows and eyelashes to my kitty!
Step 10: If you want to add small details to your animals, like whiskers, or mouths, it is easiest to use a marker or pencil crayon so you can be super precise!.
Below the nose, you will draw a straight line...
Then connect a smiley face to the bottom of the line.
Then, add some whiskers by drawing diagonal lines from the line in between the nose and mouth.
Step 11: To add the kitty ears to your puppet, place glue along the top edge of the paper bag and then attach the ears. You do not need to put glue on the ears because they are going to be over the top of the bag. Press down for ten seconds to make sure that the ears stay stuck to the bag! Your cat puppet is now finished! Let your glue dry before you start playing! I waited about ten minutes to make sure everything was finished before I started to use my puppets!
~ Made By: Katie P