Wooden Spoon Puppets

We really like puppets around here. This time, rather than our usual paper-on-a-popsicle stick or paper bag puppets, we decided to make some wooden spoon puppets. I really like how much sturdier they are than all the smooshed and wrinkled paper ones we have laying around our house.

Want to make some of your own wooden spoon puppets? It's a pretty self-explanatory process, but here's what we did:

Gather up some wooden spoons that you don't need anymore, or grab an inexpensive set from the store. We went to Big Lots and bought this pack of 4 for $1.50.

Paint your wooden spoons! Or, if you don't want to wait for the drying time with paint, you can just color them with markers, which is what we did.

Get decorating! We used foam paper (I got a big pack from Hobby Lobby a while ago), pipe cleaners, self-sticking googly eyes, pom poms, and markers. Easy! Use whatever you have!

Then put on an awesome puppet show!

William is quite the puppeteer. He put on a riveting show about a wood chip that was held hostage by the evil princess in her castle. Luckily, the good monsters and dinosaurs came and saved the day! Don't you just love witnessing your kids' growing imaginations???

ps. next time I think we'll try and make these!

Puppets for Will

Today was a puppet day. And it was just perfect. We started out by going to the Lakeshore Learning Store for their free craft activity. Have you ever been to a Lakeshore Learning Store? We love them. They're kind of dangerous though . . . we rarely leave without purchasing something that we don't really need. We just justify our purchases by saying that they're completely educational . . . Anyway, all summer long they offer free crafts on Saturdays, so we decided to head over today for their Big Mouth Whale Puppet. Will has a recent love for any and all puppets, so I knew that he would get a kick out of making a whale puppet.

The puppets could easily be recreated for an easy craft at home. The whale body was cut out of a paper plate, with two small fins and a mouth also cut out of the plate. He painted them and we glued the pieces onto the body, along with a bent pipe cleaner for the water shooting out, a pair of googly eyes, and a popsicle stick. Super easy and quick--just the kinds of crafts I prefer to do with my kids!

After we left Lakeshore, we headed straight over to our local library where they were putting on a puppet show from the book Green Eggs and Ham adapted to be between a pig and an elephant. It was so cute! I was seriously impressed. Mostly because that book gets pretty repetitive and tricky just reading it, so watching it done as a small puppet show was really impressive and so cute. Afterwards, the kids got to decorate their own green colored sugar cookies.

Overall, a fun day. Especially considering it was 97 degrees outside and the fact that I wasn't too amped about doing any outdoorsy activities. Make sure to check out the crafts at Lakeshore Learning Store this summer, as well as any fun activities your local library may be putting on!

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