Paper Bag Puppets

The kids have had fun making paper bag puppets this week.  I was skeptical at first, but in desperation one evening while I was trying to cook dinner we started these.  I’m not a terribly crafty mom all the time, and I’ll be honest, I did not come up with these puppets on my own.  I used my handy ABC Teach membership.  There are a lot of animal patterns, including some for a few stories like the three little pigs. My kids have made a wolf, kitten, seahorse, snake, frog, toucan, and lion so far.  The animals have been Daniel’s favorite. You can check out some free samples of the puppets including an owl, panda, bear, cow, and more HERE. The member ones are listed on the bottom half of that page too.  Remember ABC Teach has over 5000 free printables anyone can use(the membership gives access to over 30,000 more).

The other really neat paper bag puppets on ABC Teach are people.  There are some ready to go, including characters for Thanksgiving, or this knight Joseph made.  There are also blank templates for people with basic bodies and heads.  You add the face, hair, and so on.  Add to that files for community helpers like firefighter, veterinarian, nurse, and mechanic where the body and accessories are available to add to any head from the blank file or character files.  The girls both chose to use a ready made head (damsel) and the veterinarian body.   The accessories for the veterinarian, which I don’t have a picture of, are animals.  The knight had a sword accessory. 

These people and animal puppets have already provided my children with hours of play, from pretend to role play to story creating (the knight has saved quite a few people and toys).  My next plan for paper bag puppets is to have the kids each use the blank templates to create a favorite story character, and one Sunday soon we’ll make scripture hero puppets. 

I reviewed ABC Teach in this post, and while my free membership is up now, I became a paying customer because my children love having things printed out for them on a near daily basis.