Puppet Party

Birthday parties are a pretty big deal around here.  The planning starts a couple of months in advance.  We LOVE birthday parties.  This is a party my daughter had a few years back.  We had just completed a unit study on puppets and she was really enjoying them so we decided to have a puppet party.  One of the girls in our co-op had made a puppet theater for and let us use it for the party.  It is made from a cardboard box, wrapping paper to decorate and some material for curtains.

When the guests arrived we had the table full of craft supplies for them to make their own puppets.  We had socks, yarn, ping pong balls cut in half for eyes, wiggly eyes, red circles cut in half for the insides of the mouths etc.  Each child spent some time make their own sock puppet.  

We then had each child make a string puppet.  This was very easy and only involved basic supplies.  I used this video to teach myself and then taught the kids at the party!

Then the real fun began!  They all created puppet shows for everyone at the party.  This took up most of the rest of the party time.  We ended up only having time for one game.  Everyone was having so much fun that I just let them have at it.

The game we squeezed in was puppet themed also.  I got enough tennis balls for everyone to have one and cut a slit in the ball.  This became the "mouth" and I had each child use sharpie markers to decorate the rest of the tennis ball to look like a face or whatever they wanted with a mouth.  We then dropped candy(  you will have to use mini candy bars or other small pieces of candy to make it easier to pick up) on the floor and had then go around picking it up with their little characters mouth by squeezing the ball to open the "mouth" and then releasing the pressure at the right time to keep the candy inside.  They each had a bag to dump the candy out of the ball when it got to full.

Sorry the pictures are kind of blurry, but you get the general idea.   We just barely squeezed in enough time to eat some ice cream sundaes!

We didn't have to do gift bags because everyone took home the sock, string and tennis ball puppets they made plus the candy from the game.  I had several of the parents call me the next day and tell me their kids were still playing with the puppets.  This was definitely a fun party!