Garden Finger Puppets

Topic: arts, flowers, pollinators, projects & crafts
Time to Complete: 30 minutes
Grade Level: 3-5, K-2, Preschool
Location: Indoor, Outdoor
Season: Fall, Spring, Summer, Winter
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Finger puppets are an engaging teaching tool and an immersive way for kids to learn about animals’ roles in the garden. Kids can seek out nectar as a pollinator, hop from leaf to leaf as a grasshopper, or forage as an ant!

Materials

  • Garden puppet characters or have kids draw their own
  • Craft pipe cleaners
  • Coloring utensils (crayons, markers, or colored pencils)
  • Scissors
  • Adhesive (tape, glue, or glue dots)
  • Laminator and sheets (optional)

Instructions

  1. Have kids draw their garden puppet characters on paper or color in both of the mirror-image garden puppet characters provided.
  2. Cut out the garden puppet characters:
  • Cutting around them and including some negative space makes this easier if kids are still developing their scissor skills and still looks great. Just make sure both sides match in shape.
  • If kids have created an original creature artwork, cut it out and trace it on another piece of paper or construction paper and cut out the copied shape to be a backing.
  • If laminating, laminate the puppet characters after they have been colored and cut out.
  1. Have kids take one pipe cleaner and curl it all the way around their pointer finger.
  2. Straighten about an inch of the pipe cleaner on the far end so that it sticks straight up away from the finger, and then remove it.
  3. Tape or glue both sides of the mirror-image characters (or the original artwork and backing) to the straight portion of the pipe cleaner, sandwiching it between both sides, to match up into a two-sided creature. Tip: Glue sticks work great for this if attaching paper to paper. Glue dots or hot glue work great for attaching laminated pieces.
  4. Take your puppets out into the garden, and let the play commence!
An orange pipecleaner curled around a finger.
Curl the pipe cleaner around a finger
A colorful paper hummingbird attached to an orange pipecleaner, curled around a finger.
Finished puppet!

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