Ever have one of those projects you have every intention of doing, but just… don’t? This was mine. I’ve wanted to make sock puppets for months but never got around to it! I finally did, and can’t believe it took me so long. They were so easy to put together, and the kids LOVE them.
Unfortunately, my monkeys are too young to work a glue gun, so I had to do most of the work for these. But Soph had input on style choices and colors π
The great thing about these puppets is that you can do whatever you want with them! Let your creativity run wild. For materials, we used:
Socks
Hot glue gun
Scissors
Felt
Wire
Needle/thread
Yarn
Rickrack
Pipe cleaners
Buttons
Pom poms
Ribbon
Googly eyes
Plastic pearls
Other than socks and hot glue, the rest is pretty much up to you – just use whatever you find lying around your house π
For this puppet, I cut out some lips with felt, and glued those on. Then for the hair, I made a loop of yarn (like how you would loop a hose in a circle to put it away), then tied the loop into a knot, which made for a nice bow. The necklace is made from some plastic pearl beads on a pipe cleaner, but I think it would’ve been even better had I used some stretchy elastic.
This one is pretty simple – the tongue and mustache were cut out of felt, and the hair is made of pipe cleaners. I was able to thread the pipe cleaners through the sock, using the metal ends as a needle. Then I wrapped them around a marker to make them curly!
This one took the longest to make, but was still very easy. The eyes are just googly eyes hot glued onto pom poms. For the hair, I threaded the yarn onto a large needle and sewed it into the top of the sock (just going in and our of the sock once). When I had enough hair, I trimmed it all to the same length, and hot glued the inside of where the hair was, to keep it in place. Finally, I finished it off with some bows tied with ribbon.
This puppet may be simple, but I still love it. The hair is strands of rickrack that I tied into a knot and glued on top. The eyes are buttons, and the glasses are made from wire. Just use a wire that isn’t super thin, and bend it into the shape of glasses, and hot glue them on.
See?? I told you they were easy! And my little monkeys absolutely love them. I’m sure we will get many many hours of play out of these things π
Those are so adorable! I made my kids a couple about 6 months ago and they still play with them. I just asked my son what their names are and he says Gag and Flibble Flobble (which I now remember). I think it’s crazy he can go months without playing with them and still remember their names! It’s like they’re part of the family.
How did I just see this comment?? Um, those names are adorable. How sweet! Kids remember everything π
Lovely!
Thank you, Ali!
This year in Speech-Language Therapy, my theme is making puppets and increasing all areas of speech-language and hearing skills with puppets, plays that kids make up, storytelling, etc. I love your puppets and these look easy to make with kids ages ]K-5th grade]
Can’t wait to get started on my bulletin boards, etc.
Cathy