DIY Activities for All Ages

Scroll down to create hours of fun with your own two hands and a little help from “DIY Activities For All Ages”! MicheLee Puppets wants to empower you and your family to create puppet shows of your own, so we have created videos that teach you how to create and perform puppets!  From puppets to stages to pop-up scenery there is something for everyone, and best of all…it’s FREE!

Enjoy these fun and educational activities for teachers, homeschoolers, parents and children to do together. Instructions include how to both make AND perform your very own puppets. Get crafty with your own original characters, recreate a favorite story, or invent a fractured fairytale. You’ll be amazed by what you can make!  Re-use items from around the house or pick up simple materials from your local store. The choice is yours! What are you waiting for? Get creative!

DIY: Make a Glove Hand Puppet

Posted on by

Make a custom glove puppet with just a few simple materials. Follow along to our DIY video with the written instructions below.

 

SUPPLIES:

Re-use Plastic Eggs to Make Hand Puppets

Posted on by

 

Don’t fill the landfill, get creative! Re-use plastic eggs to make unique hand puppet characters. Let your imagination run wild with just a few simple steps. You can:

  • Make a family of characters such as Little Red Riding Hood, The Wolf and Granny to perform your own fractured fairy tale
  • Make an original character and write a story of your own. Give your character a name, a fun voice, and decide what makes your character happy, sad, scared, confused and angry. Develop stories from these characteristics: Example: My character’s name is Eggly. She loves to chase spiders. She is sad when she can’t find spiders. She is confused when spiders run away from her. She is angry when people mistreat spiders.

Follow along to our “DIY Puppets from Plastic Eggs” Video with these written instructions below:

Supplies:

  • 1 plastic egg that divides horizontally
  • Felt (slightly bigger than the egg)
  • Scissors
  • Drill or Xacto knife
  • Marker (for tracing onto felt)
  • Glue (craft glue, fabric glue or hot glue)
  • Water in a small dish (if using hot glue)
  • 1 pipe cleaner
  • Decorative materials (google eyes, fur, craft foam, pom poms, yarn, permanent markers)

 

Instructions:

  1. Separate plastic egg into 2 pieces 
  2. If your egg pieces don’t already have holes on the rounded edge, drill or use an Xacto knife to create 2 holes approx ¼ inch apart on the rounded edge of each piece. 
  3. Cut your pipe cleaner in half with scissors or wire cutters 
  4. Create a handle for you middle finger on the longer egg piece by threading the pipe cleaner through the holes, sliding it over your middle finger. Then twist the pipe cleaner inside of the piece top secure the handle, then flatten the remaining pipe cleaner ends.
  5. Repeat using the shorter egg piece and thumb.
  6. Place the eggs next to each other on the felt, flat side down. They should be touching. 
  7. Trace around the edges of both eggs with a marker onto the felt. The image should look like an “8” without the center line when completed.
  8. Cut out the felt tracing
  9. Glue the rounded part of the felt onto the inside of one of the egg pieces, hiding the pipe cleaner. Repeat with the other egg piece. This will connect the two pieces and create a hinge for the mouth to move.
  10. Decorate! Create hair with yarn or fur, add eyes and teeth. You can even draw on the eggs with a permanent marker.
  11. Perform! Put your middle finger on top and your thumb on the bottom and put on a show!

Companies Team-Build While Giving Back Through “Sock Puppets with a Heart”

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

“Ooh! This one will have pigtails!”… “I’m going for a lion look”… “I don’t know what this will be, but I am having a blast!”

With hands, glue guns, socks, and pom-pom’s flying, employees are whisked away from everyday office pressures into a flurry of creativity, laughing and sharing!

 

 

 Universal Orlando Resort is one of several organizations which participate in MicheLee Puppets’ Sock Puppets with a Heart, a program established in 2010 that allows company volunteers to build unique, handmade sock puppet characters, while bonding with their fellow employees.  It is here where roles often reverse, and hidden employee talents emerge. One participant shares that this is the first time since leaving his native Haiti that he has had received an opportunity to practice his true passion:

“Crunching numbers is how I make my living, but art is what makes my soul sing.”

 

 

Creativity and team-building, are not the only benefits these puppets provide. Once constructed, MicheLee Puppets gathers the finished characters (reinforcing any loose pieces) and donates the puppets to places where they will be the most impactful, such as domestic violence shelters, hospitals, and other places where children need healing.

 “Children often won’t report a loved one, even if they are being harmed,”

explains Denise Lucich, Communications Manager at MicheLee Puppets

“but slip a puppet on their hands and suddenly they begin to reveal things they have never told before. There is a safety and security that the puppet brings. It’s truly magical”

 

 

Throughout their 30-year history, MicheLee Puppets has experienced this magic time and time again. Sock Puppets with a Heart is inspired by the puppetry workshops MicheLee Puppets provided at Harbour House of Central Florida, an emergency shelter for victims of domestic violence. When children slipped their hands into puppet characters, their personal stories began to emerge. One student spoke for the first time since arriving three weeks earlier and sang “Happy Birthday” with her puppet. Another broke her silence while performing “The Three Little Pigs” as she described how her father was shot and killed in front of her while the police were trying to protect her family. The characters provided by Sock Puppets with a Heart open children up to reveal in order to heal.

 

 

Since 2010, more than 2,000 puppets have been created and donated by companies, sororities, scout troops, individuals and more.

Join Finfrock, Florida Hospital, Apopka Memorial Middle School, Girl Scouts, KPMG, Universal Orlando Resort, and Delta Pi Omega as a participant in Sock Puppets with a Heart!

Interested in being part of Sock Puppets with a Heart? MicheLee Puppets provides you and your company with the information and materials list to get started.  Watch this video for tips on how to assemble your puppet. Click Here for written instructions. 

 

Email jamie@67.23.246.118 for more information on how to get involved.