Make a Tennis Ball Puppet

Put some bounce in your puppet-making skills! Your child will create a cool puppet from a tennis ball and other crafts materials.

What You Need:

• Clean tennis ball
• Box cutter or sharp scissors
• Glue
• Red fabric marker, permanent marker, or magic marker
• Googly eyes
• Yarn or pipe cleaners
• Optional: stickers, other marker or permanent marker colors, feather, flower, buttons, beads, glitter shapes

What You Do:

1. Tell your child that she will make her own puppet out of a tennis ball!
2. The adult should do this part: use the box cutter or scissors to cut a mouth shape in the ball. It can be difficult to cut, but is a little easier if you cut along the gray curved line on the tennis ball. Don’t make the mouth cut too long.
3. Let your child outline the mouth shape with the red permanent marker or fabric pen. She will draw “lips” around the mouth cut.
4. Help her glue on googly eyes, buttons or plain colored round stickers for eyes on the puppet.
5. Help her give the puppet hair by gluing yarn (black, brown, yellow, or another favorite color!) or a pipe cleaner. A twisted pipe cleaner glued on the top of the ball will look like braids!
6. A plain white round sticker could be glued on for a nose. Or use a skin color sharpie or marker to draw a nose and ears. Use the red pen or marker to draw rosy cheeks!
7. Your child may want to add a barrette, flower or feather in the puppet’s “hair.”
8. Does your puppet need earrings? Glue on beads, buttons, or pieces of glitter. If materials don’t glue on easily (and some materials won’t), you can always use stickers for earrings.
9. Your child can play with your puppet and make it “talk” by squeezing the back of the tennis ball, which makes the puppet’s mouth open.