Nursery Rhyme Puppet Show

I cannot begin to tell you just how much we have played with this simple puppet show over the last couple of months. It was something I came up with for Bean one winters day when we were stuck inside and at a bit of a loose end! Bean LOVES anything involving story telling and imaginary play, so this was a total hit with her. Its a perfect rainy day activity for children 2.5 years and older as they can choose the stories and help make the scenery and puppets as well.

To make this we used:

• Old cardboard box (thick cardboard)
• Small sturdy cardboard box
• Cereal box (or other thin cardboard)
• Scissors
• Sticky Tape
• Small googly eyes
• Coloured pens
• A4 coloured paper
• Lollipop sticks
• Blue tack

The 'stage' to hold the background scenery was made by cutting a thick price of cardboard from an old box into a rectangle (must be at least A4 size), and then attaching another small box to the back to hold it upright, using a strip of cardboard and sticky tape. 

The backgrounds are simply A4 peices of coloured paper, stuck to the stage with blue tack, and decorated with coloured pen, pastels, and cut out paper to make the scenery for the story. 

The puppets were cut out from thinner cardboard (we used empty cereal boxes) to make the body shapes, decorated with coloured pens and googly eyes, and then stuck to lollipop sticks with sticky tape. Bean was able to help with decorating the backgrounds and puppets, sticky taping things together, and of course chose which stories we would make. 

It's so incredibly simple to do, and you can make as many puppets and as many backgrounds as you like! We ended up making quite a few over a number of days, and even now we will add on a new story from time to time. We started off doing nursery rhymes, Baa Baa Black Sheep pictured above...

...Little Bo Peep...

...Incy Wincy Spider...

...Jack Be Nimble...

...Jack and Jill...

...Little Miss Muffet...

...Hickory Dickory Dock (made using a paper plate, cereal box clock hands, and a split pin to hold them in place and allow them to turn)...

For this one the mouse and cat were made using small and large coloured pom poms glued together using a hot glue gun, with googly eyes and kitchen string for whiskers...

...and then we moved on to some of Bean's favourite movies, above is The Lonely Goatherd from The Sound of Music (As yet unfinished, few more characters to make!)...

...But the one which has been by far Bean's favourite and most used...The Wizard of Oz!

As you can probably see this puppet show has been well loved, and therefore has seen a bit of wear and tear. If I had pre-planned this activity I might have decided to laminate the backgrounds and even the puppet bodies after decorating to make them a bit more durable long term. It would be particularly recommendable if you have multiple children playing or children younger than 2, and i've already thought of re-making this puppet show with the other Little Beans when we start day care and laminating it to be an ongoing resource. 

I really hope you try this one at home!

Happy Playing!