Make Your Own Kids' Puppet Theater

Kids love to make believe and show off for their families and friends. What better way to do all that than with their very own puppet theater?

Purchasing a puppet theater can be very costly. Most advertised are in the thousands of dollars. If that is out of your budget, you can easily make your own kid's puppet theater with some simple materials and a little creativity.

Materials Needed

1. Large cardboard box
2. Paint
3. Length of fabric of your choice
4. Stout twine or string
5. 2 smooth nuts and bolts
6. Construction paper
7. Glue

Building the Theater

The theater is simply made by sealing up a large box such as one for an appliance, and cutting a rectangular opening in the side. This opening is where the stage of the puppet theater will be. Painting the cardboard box will make it more attractive and marginally sturdier.

The inside back of the cardboard box can be decorated with a scene either painted or fashioned from construction paper. Conversely, your kids can create multiple scenes for different puppet plays. They might like an outside landscape scene, a castle scene, or an inside room scene.

Construct a Working Curtain

To give your kid's puppet theater a realistic flair, you can construct a working curtain with the fabric and string. Simply sew or glue a narrow pocket along one length of the fabric and thread the string into it.

Insider the nuts and bolts on either side of the stage opening, high up in the cardboard. Loop the string over these nuts and knot it in a continuous loop. Think of a clothesline for laundry.

Making the Puppets

The puppets can be made in a variety of ways. One of the easiest ways to make puppets is to construct different people and animals out of construction paper and attach a long wooden dowel to their feet to control them out of sight.

Hand puppets can also be made out of fabric and many types of trims, buttons, and beads. Your kids will enjoy using their imagination to come up with new ideas for characters and the stories that they are in.

Putting on a Show

When it is time to put on a puppet show in your kid's new theater, you must put the box up on a table or other stand. The kids will stand to the sides of the stage, out of sight behind the cardboard. Or they can sit on the floor under it and poke their puppets upward onto the stage area. A quick pull on the curtain's string and the play can commence!

Building your own kid's puppet theater can be as fun and exciting as coming up with great puppet shows. With simple materials that do not cost very much, your kids can have a perfect theater to showcase their story telling and acting talents.