Description
Allow student creativity while making their own unique puppets.
Supplies
- Paper bags (enough for each student to have one)
- Markers
- Crayons
- Construction paper
- Any other supplies you think your students would enjoy making puppets with (Ex. supplies: buttons, googly eyes, string, stickers, ribbon, pipe cleaners, etc.)
How to Play
- Pass out one paper bag to each student and divide the other supplies evenly among the group. Remind the group to be kind and caring friends by sharing the supplies.
- Encourage students to make their puppet anything they want (an animal or person). Show them how to be creative and make their puppets look unique. Not only can they put eyes, mouth, nose, etc. on puppets they can make hair, jewelry, clothes, etc.
- After students finish with their puppet creations, have them brainstorm their puppet’s name and personality.
- Encourage them to make props that go along with what their puppet would be interested in. For example, if their puppet is a singer they could make a microphone.
- After each student is finished with the props for their puppet, allow each student to come to the front and tell the group about their puppet.
- Motivate students to think outside the box and share unique facts about their puppets. Show students how to support each other while sharing with either claps or snaps.
Activity Prompts for Reflection
- Why did you decide to create the puppet that you did?
- What is one similarity your puppet has with another puppet?
- What is one thing that is unique or different about your puppet?
- Does anyone have a compliment about someone’s unique puppet that they want to give?
Other Ways to Play
- Determine a setting or theme and then have students create their puppet and create an imaginary character that would fit that theme. For example, the setting is a day at the amusement park, and a student may create a pony puppet and say their pony is a part of the carousel ride. Or, on the farm and a student may create a cow puppet named Daisy the dairy cow.
- Challenge students to use their puppets to ask another puppet questions about themselves.
- Have students pair up or get in small groups and come up with a quick story about their puppets and have them act out the story for the rest of the group.
Additional Notes
- Have a variety of different facial expressions already cut out that they can use to create their puppet. Ex: A smiling mouth, a surprised mouth, a small nose, a big nose, wide eyes, skinny eyes.
- Have a sample puppet already created for them to see and visualize the activity before they begin. Or have some print-ups of ideas or templates. I heart crafty things website is a helpful resource for this.
- Be mindful of the time and allow about half the time to create puppets and half the time to play with puppets and show off their puppet to other students.
- Use the SEL Activity Prompts to tie other SEL competencies to this activity.
