Is your child an actress by nature but scared away by the thought of performing in front of an audience? Help her overcome her stage fright with a sock puppet as her sidekick.
What You Need:
- Sock
- Hand
- Scissors
- Yarn
- Buttons
- Glue
- Cotton balls
- Pen
- Felt
What You Do:
- Hand your child a sock and a pen.
- Have her slide the sock over her hand so that her thumb rests in the heel of the sock and her fingers rest in the toes of the sock.
- Have your child create an opening and closing mouth motion with her hand still inside the sock.
- With a pen, lightly mark in the areas where the tongue, nose, and eyes will go on your child’s sock puppet.
- Once marked, have your child pull her hand out of the sock.
- Starting with the tongue first, have her lay the sock down flat on a table so she can see where she marked the sock.
- Hand her some red felt and help her cut out a strip just long enough to serve as the sock puppet’s tongue. If your child is feeling creative, don’t feel obligated to use the color red for your child’s sock puppet tongue.
- Squeeze out some glue along the area you marked for the sock puppet’s tongue and lay the felt strip down along the glue. You may want to make the tongue slightly longer than the marked area in order to give the impression of the sock puppet’s tongue hanging out slightly.
- Allow the glue to dry.
- Once dry, carefully flip the toes of the sock over the tongue so your child can see where she marked the nose and eyes.
- Have her dab a few drops of glue into the areas she marked out for the nose and eyes.
- Help her glue a cotton ball nose to the front of her sock puppet and two button eyes towards the back of it.
- Allow the glue to dry once more.
- While the glue is drying, assist your child in cutting out several pieces of yarn of different lengths.
- Once cut out, carefully adjust the sock puppet one last time so that the sock is lying completely flat again. This time with the tongue still underneath it and the eyes and nose on top.
- Squeeze out several lines of glue close to where the eyes of your child’s sock puppet are set.
- Carefully line the strips of yarn you and your child cut out along the lines of glue, to create the hair for the sock puppet.
- Allow the glue to dry one last time.
- Once dry, have your child slip her new sock puppet over her hand in order to give it a test run with its new features.
Note: Feel free to change or add even more features to your child’s sock puppet as the design can be of anything your child’s heart desires.
Add your own comment