“I want to make a puppet” he said with conviction, “a finger leg puppet.”
“Ok” I said, asking what sort of finger puppet my boy wanted to make.
“No” he said with frustration, “not a finger puppet, a finger leg puppet!”
It took me a while to comprehend that my boy wanted to make a puppet where the fingers are the legs!
Once he had explained the concept to me and I finally understood we set to work to make, not a finger puppet, but a finger leg puppet!
Make a Finger Leg Puppet.
These finger leg puppets are super easy to make and lots of fun.
If you’d like to make some you’ll need:
- some cardboard
- scissors
- pencils or markers
- optional free printable template (download below)
To make your finger leg puppet all you need to do is draw a character – a person, an animal, a monster, an alien… whatever you like, but make sure to leave space at the bottom for the legs!
Once you are done drawing you need to cut two round holes at the bottom of your character so you can slip your fingers into them to make legs.
We found it a little tricky to figure out where the legs would go on our end products and to leave enough room for them, so I made up some simple templates to help. The finger leg puppet templates have grey circles to indicate where the finger holes go, and a lighter grey outline as a rough guide for the rest of the drawing.
You can download the finger leg puppet template here.
This printable is an A4 sized pdf file, you will need a pdf reader such as adobe acrobat to open it. If you are printing on US ‘letter sized’ paper be sure to select ‘fit’ or ‘shrink to fit’ from your printer options.
Please remember that the printables at picklebums.com are for personal use only, you may not sell, share, or link directly to these files.
Aliens were the characters of choice for my big boy. And not only did he have fun making them, he had lots of fun creating stories with them and putting on puppet shows all afternoon.
What sort of creatures would you make for your finger leg puppets?
Find more fun drawing activities here.
What a fun project to do! Always fun to make puppets! But finger leg ones even better ;-)
What a fabulous project, our new school boy would love to do some tomorrow on his day off – we still have 2 more Wednesdays off.
Thank you for sharing
I used to love making these when I was little. We used to do all kinds of crazy puppet shows for my parents too. Those are some fab aliens :) We used to add moustaches and crazy hair too. So much fun :)
Loving all your new little printables Kate :)
Can’t wait to see what type of puppets and stories Cam creates with these.
These are fabulous! Can’t wait to give these a go! Perfect puppets for toddler fingers!
Great idea for open ended creativity! Pinning :)
So cute! I love the printable and how children can make what ever they want to make. So perfect!
I can’t believe I had forgotten about finger LEG puppets! What a great addition to story-telling play. I think we’ll do a set for Chicken Little, so everyone can “Run and tell the King!”
You inspired me to do this with my Art Club.
See the results here:
http://hannahsartclub.wordpress.com/2014/01/11/monsters-vs-aliens-finger-leg-puppets-november-2013/
Thanks for the brilliant idea. My kids LOVED it!
Hannah
Thank you Kate for sharing this great idea. I am going to use it as inspiration for my son to write stories. He will make up 4 character puppets and then design an adventure story around those. See how we go..