Easter Finger Puppets

It was raining yesterday for the second day this week. Toddler moms know where this is going – basically, crazy. The boy was bouncing off the walls (literally), and I was 100% done. Somehow we survived the winter, but now that he’s had a taste of running around outside, it is soooo much worse when he can’t.

Finger puppets are something we used to make as kids. They use hot glue, so they’re not the most tiny-kid friendly activity, but tiny kids love them. I remembered this around 2 when nap time failed. I tossed him in the tub with some bathtub paint and quick made a few finger puppets while he turned the entire bathtub green. Between the paint and the puppets, I bought myself almost an hour of relative calmness – long enough to get his sister calmed down and down for her nap. Gotta love the mom life!

Anyway, I stole them today to take pictures because I thought they came out cute. The idea is really versatile – you could make just about any animal you could imagine. I have Easter on the brain right now and it seems to be impossible for me to make anything other than chicks, bunnies, and lambs. It’s rather convenient that Alex’s favorite animals are bunnies and chicks (he tolerates lambs). Another reason these are so versatile is the pipe cleaner base. It can be wound and rewound around fingers of all sizes, which means that both Alex and I can use the same puppet with just a quick adjustment to the pipe cleaner.

Incidentally, these can also be used as pencil toppers if you wind them around a pencil.

Finger Puppets, Step-by-Step

Materials

medium pompoms
small wiggle eyes
pipe cleaners
fun foam
hot glue
scissors

Start by winding the pipe cleaner around your finger.

Now make the top into a circle by tucking the end under the last loop.

Glue a pom pom to the top using hot glue.

The last step is to decorate. I started by gluing the wiggle eyes on each of them, then added details.

For the chick, I cut a small orange triangle out of fun foam and glued it on.

The bunny was a little more involved. He got a pink foam triangle nose, and two ears cut from white foam with pink insides.

And the lamb got a black triangle nose with two ears. I shaped the ears to stick out slightly from the sides after I glued just the tops to the pom pom. The ears are shaped like balloons before they get blow up.

And that’s it! Now you can put on your own puppet show, or as my son does, feed your puppets and place them under a burp cloth, then insist that everyone be quiet because they are asleep!