Craft Wild Animal Puppets

What You Need:

• Brown paper lunch bag
• Construction paper
• Crayons, oil pastels or markers
• Scissors
• Pencil
• Glue stick

What You Do:

1. Discuss what type of animal your child would like to create. Any animal will do, including fantasy animals. Ask about specific details that his animal has which make it easy to recognize. Examples such as a furry mane, stripes, scales or a long tail are helpful to note.
2. Have him draw his animal's hair, ears, tail or any other attributes on construction paper using a pencil. Help make sure that they are properly sized so they fit on the paper bag and not too small.
3. Using scissors, help him cut out all of the parts of his animal from the construction paper.
4. Place the closed bag so the folded “bottom” of the bag is at the top and facing up.
5. Start with the animal's hair and help your child glue it at the very top part of the bag.
6. If his animal has a tale flip the bag over and estimate where the tail should be. Help him glue it to the back side of the bag. If his animal has particularly large ears, they can be glued from behind as well.
7. Flip the bag back over again so the front of the animal is facing up.
8. Have him draw the animal's face on the top part of the bag. Draw in the eyes, nose and any other features the animal may have, like stripes or spots. Make sure he draws the mouth so that the upper lip is on the folded flap and the bottom half is below so it can open and close as a mouth to create a puppet that can “talk”.
9. Carefully lift up the top of the “bottom” part of the bag and have him color what the inside of his animal's mouth looks like - teeth, tongue, darkness, crazy colors or even a meal would be fun.
10. Draw the rest of the animal's body on the bottom of the bag.
11. His animal is now ready to roam, play, talk and roar!

Tip: This project can be altered for Christmas by creating a reindeer.