Puppet Play

Puppets are wonderful toys for building your toddler’s talking and listening skills. Playing with puppets will also give your toddler the chance to be in charge and use his imagination as he creates adventures for the characters he invents.

Make and play with puppets with your toddler.

Use socks and mittens without a match for making hand puppets. You can draw on a face and other features with permanent marker or sew on buttons for eyes and other fabric pieces for floppy ears or funny hair.
Paper cutouts of people or animals taped to wooden spoons make good puppets.
Lunch-size paper bags are easy to transform with markers and construction paper, but they can get crumpled and ripped.
Use a glove without a match to make finger puppets: Cut off the fingers and draw a face on each finger.
Take the puppet-making outside and your child can glue on things like leaf ears or needle whiskers.

Get the puppet fun started by using the puppets to tell your toddler a familiar story. As he sees how it works, take turns being different characters. Before you know it, he’ll be putting on a show for you! (Be sure to put away scissors and other tools so children won’t be tempted to cut their own mittens up!)