Felt Animal Finger Puppets
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Making puppets is an excellent way of enhancing your kids’ creativity and learning arts. Creating puppets, like our Felt Animal Finger Puppets, will also keep your kids busy during holidays or when the weather is not ideal for outdoor activities.
There are various kinds of puppets which you can make from various supplies such as gloves socks, packaging material and anything at your disposal. Here we will learn how to make Felt Animal Finger Puppets for kids.
Felt Animal Finger Puppets
Supplies needed:
- Felt sheet
- Sharpie or markers
- Scissors
- Small googly eyes
- Embroidery thread
- Regular glue or fabric glue
- Sewing needle
- Glue Gun
For this procedure, we will use the same sheet for all the five fingers. The first step is to trace your index finger on the felt paper eight times. Then trace the thumb twice. Remember you are making the front and back pairs for each of the five fingers. You want your felt to fit correctly and have a smooth curve at the top.
Now, cut out the pieces of felt in pairs one for the back and the other for the front side of your finger. You want them slightly larger than your finger so that they fit correctly.
Using your sewing needle and embroidering thread, sew the back and front parts together at the edges. Ensure you make enough space for your finger to fit. Proceed to cut the extra felt that protrudes from the seam you sewed. However, avoid cutting very close to the edge. Now turn the stitched felt inside out such that the embroidered side goes inside.
Subject to the age of the kids, you may wish to do the above and let them proceed with developing the face features. Sewing with needles and cutting with scissors pose a risk to young ones. You want your kids to enjoy every step while they enjoy the craft. If they are old enough, then you can let them use the tools from the first step. With your assistance and guidance, the kids will learn,and you can now make them do everything by themselves.
You can cut shapes for the ears and nose from a different coloured felt. Alternatively, you can just colour these shapes on the same felt. This is even more interesting for the kids – they love colouring. Sew on the ears using a simple stitch or use the glue gun to attach the ears. If you have some, fabric glue is the best for connecting the ears.
Use glue to stick googly eyes. You can also use markers and other creative accessories to draw the eyes and create facial features. The choice depends on your creativity and preference.
There are two ways you can use to have the mouth in place. You can opt to draw on the mouth using a fabric pen or a sharpie. Alternatively, you can stitch the mouth. Also, you can stick googly eyes or use markers and other creative accessories to create the facial features.
Benefits of making finger puppets
The great thing about felt finger puppets is that your kids can decide to make an animal or cartoon character they wish. Your kids can also make the finger puppets to match the theme say Halloween, Christmas and any event. Let your kids explore their imaginations to build the finger puppets.
Making finger puppets has the benefit of enhancing your kid’s fine motor skills. Children can also use the puppets to practice and improve skills in storytelling. To enhance your kid’s imagination, you can encourage him or her to come up with stories, plays and dances using the felt finger puppets as the characters.
The best thing about finger puppets is the amount of time your kids take to learn, create and perfect the art. Your kids will feel happy and proud of their creations. Once they complete their craft, you can customise each puppet by adding a label from Wunderlabel.co.uk with the creator’s name and keep them for memories. Make the art unique,and you can then gift this to your kids during the festivities or for their birthday.
