Kids Crafts: Sock Puppets

What are sock puppets?

What is a sock puppet? It is a puppet that is made by using a sock as the base. To see how a sock puppet might work, take your sock and stretch it over your arm and hand with your fingers in the toe of the sock and your thumb below to form a mouth and jaw for the puppet.

Basic sock puppets

You will need the following to make your basic sock puppets:

• Socks (any type, any color)
• Yarn, felt and other fabric scraps
• Markers
• Scissors
• White glue or glue gun with hot glue (with a parent's assistance)
• Waxed paper or other paper

Optional additions;

• Googly eyes
• Sequins, buttons, feathers and other decorations

To make a basic sock puppet, you will cut pieces of fabric to make facial features, hair, clothing and other accessories for your puppet. Crumple waxed or plain paper into balls and stuff it inside your sock. This will help keep the glue from sticking the sock to itself and will help the sock hold its puppet shape while you are working on it. Now you can glue the features and decorations to your puppet.

Dog Sock Puppet

Want to make a dog sock puppet? You will need:

• Sock
• Googly eyes
• Felt (suggested colors: red, pink, brown and white)
• Waxed paper
• Scissors
• Glue

Stuff your sock with crumpled waxed paper. Cut two large floppy ears and glue them to the sides of your sock puppet so that they will hang down on either side of the head. Cut a round "nose" out of pink or brown felt and glue it to the "nose" of your puppet, right where your fingers will be. Glue googly eyes or buttons to make the eyes for your dog puppet. Use a disc of pale pink felt to make the inside of the dog puppet's mouth and attach a red tongue that hangs out of his mouth a little bit. Woof!

You can also adapt your dog puppet design to make a favorite character like "Blue" or "Clifford the Big Red Dog."

Dragon Puppet

Planning to put on a puppet skit of your favorite fairy tale? You may want to make a dragon sock puppet.

You will need:

• Sock
• Googly eyes
• Felt (suggested colors: green, red, yellow, orange, white, black)
• Waxed paper
• Scissors
• Glue

While a green sock is ideal for making a dragon, you can use any color you like. Get your sock ready by stuffing it with waxed paper. Cut two large pieces of green felt to extend the dragon's snout and mouth and glue them over the sock. Use a pen to draw nostrils on the top snout, or use small circles of black felt.

Inside the mouth, add 2 rows of white felt triangles to make sharp dragon teeth. Add some yellow and orange felt cut into flames, sticking out of the dragon's mouth if you want to have a fire-breathing dragon.

Glue large googly eyes on to the dragon's face. Use more of the green felt to cut several triangles of approximately 1-2 inches in size. Along the sock dragon's back, glue pairs of triangles so the bases are glued to the dragon puppet and the pairs of triangles come together at points to form spikes down the dragon's back. You may also add wings to the sides of your dragon puppet.

More Sock Puppet Ideas

• Help your children make puppets of characters from a favorite book. For preschool aged children, try fairy tale puppets like the three little pigs and the big bad wolf or a princess and a frog puppet (of course with a prince puppet for the frog to turn into when he gets his magical princess kiss). For school aged children, suggest Harry Potter puppets.
• Put on a puppet show. It is easy to make a puppet stage by cutting two sides out of a large cardboard box.