How to Make a Paper Puppy Puppet

Our family enjoys making their own puppet shows. Here are the instructions for making our easy easy Paper Puppy Puppet. We use the same technique to make lots of other animals, just by changing the details.

To make your paper puppy you need to start with a large index card, the five-inch by eight-inch kind, or half a sheet of regular construction paper, which is usually about six inches by ten inches. This paper will be the body of your puppy. Choose a color that you like for the body or use paint or crayons to make that rectangle the color you want your puppy to be.

In addition to the rectangle you will need a small circle of pink construction paper. Make a circle about and inch wide and then cut it in half, so you have half a circle. Save the other half for making another puppet some other time.

You will need one long thin oval in red construction paper. It should be about the size of those larger Popsicle sticks, about an inch wide and four five inches long. You will also need two pieces similar to that one to be the ears. Those can be the same color as your puppy's body, or they can be a contrasting color. For instance, if you have a black and white puppy he might have a black body with white ears.

Each of the ears should be a stretched our egg shape, like and oval that is fatter at one end. They are about five inches long; only an inch or so at the top and but closer to two inches at the bottom.

Lay your rectangle on your working surface with the short edge closest to you. Attach your red oval to the bottom short edge sticking straight down. It should only overlap onto the brown edge by a quarter to a half an inch. Then attach your two ear pieces to the long sides of your rectangle one on each side starting about 2 inches down from the top corners.

You should end up with a rectangle in the middle and ovals sticking out on three sides so it looks sort of like the letter "T". When you put the ears on make sure that the small edge is attached to your rectangle and the larger end is the one sticking out to the left and right.

Now flip your rectangle over so that you are on the opposite side of your rectangle. On the top short edge put your pink half circle so the edge of the half circle is flush with the top center of your rectangle. That makes the puppy's nose.

At this point the only thing you still need to add are eyes, but it will be clearer where to put them once you are holding your puppy in position. Pick up your body rectangle and roll it, not quite folding it but curling it, so that the pink half circle is touching the red oval. The pink half circle should be on he outside of the curl not on the inside where you can't see it.

Put you hands behind it so that your fingers are on the side with the pink half circle and your thumb is underneath on the part that has the red oval hanging off of it. As you bring those together you will see that the pink half circle is the nose and the red oval is your puppy's tongue hanging out, on either side your other two ovals are the puppy's ears. Holding in that position it's easier to decide where to place your eye so they look balanced. You can use more construction paper to form the eyes, or you can add them with paint or craft paints, or you can add those googley eyes.

You can use the procedure to make lots of other animals too. We created a whole village of them and had our own puppet show.

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