Puppet Master

I was invited to a birthday part this weekend. The birthday girl was turning one, and her father mentioned that it would be a puppet party, and then went on to say that they actually only had one puppet, so he would be making a run to Toys-R-Us... I decided I would add to the inventory! I knew that the Old MacDonald puppet was on his list, and I decided to go with the farm animal theme as well. As I have not made a puppet for many years, and remembering that I always made them too small to get one's hand into, I thought it was a good idea to do some research.(I never turn down an opportunity to do research!) I saw a great puppet family on Wilma Flanagan It's Storytime site: http://www.geocities.com/mystorytime/index.htm. I copied the shape for the puppets, but then I made some slight modifications: I made the hen blue so that the chicks really stood out against her.


I also zigzagged in bright red just for fun. I used flannel for the coxcomb and chin-waggle. Being a city girl, I was confused at first by the picture--I thought that only roosters had that! But after more research I saw that I was wrong, so now I don't know how I can tell them apart!

I thought that I could glue on some eyes, but for some reason the glue did not work on this felt. I had a temporary insanity moment where all the eyes started dropping off and sticking to the table, the floor, me...I did not want my friend's daughter to pull the eyes off and eat them, so I opted for the laundry-marker method. I did find that if I used the marker on the spot where I had tried to glue before, that the ink did not bleed at all, and was much darker than if I had used it on dry felt. So that worked out well.

Now all the little chicks and the mother hen are in baby's hands, so to speak...