Paper Bag Animal Puppets
I think Paper Bag Puppets are an awesome craft for creative kids because they fill three important buckets: (1) They’re made with common materials that are likely already in our homes (2) It’s an open-ended craft that invites kids to create any animal from their imaginations (3) Children can include them in a puppet show or play, further encouraging pretend play.
Today I’ll share four paper bag puppets to spark your imagination. Feel free to use these ideas as you see them, or borrow them as a jumping off point for your own unique paper bag puppet creations.
Supplies: Paper Bag Puppets
- Paper lunch bag/s
- Construction paper
- White glue
- Scissors
- Brush and jar for glue (optional)
- Markers (optional)
Prep: Paper Bag Puppets
- For little ones: precut shapes that could be turned into eyes, ears, beaks, noses, etc., and then invite your child to design with these shapes.
- Having a few precut shapes can spark ideas and encourage children to get started. Offer paper and scissors to older children, as they may enjoy cutting their own shapes.
- Have extra paper ready to cut in case your child has more ideas.
Prompt
To help spark your child’s curiosity, you could say something like: “Let’s use these paper shapes to turn our paper bag into an animal or something from our imaginations.”
Steps
- Choose shapes to represent different face and body features.
- Your child can glue shapes right away or move all the pieces into place before gluing.
- Glue the pieces down.
- Add more details with markers or even paint.
- When the paper bag puppet is dry, make a puppet show or have a pretend play party.
If you enjoy open-ended creative prompts and play invitations like this one, you’re invited to join me in TinkerLab’s membership program, TinkerLab Schoolhouse.
Schoolhouse members receive 5 weekly open-ended experiences, designed for children ages 3 to 8, that cover a range of media and concepts such as printmaking, collage, painting, science, and drawing. Each activity comes with a printable guide and short format video. Join us!
