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Monkey Puppet or Paper Craft

by Leanne Guenther

This is the same type of project as the T-Rex puppet.  I gave a few more specific directions and pictures to follow in those instructions, so if you get stuck, you might want to read through them.

If you don't want a huge project, but still want to do something with these Templates, you could do this as a paper craft (just glue the pieces together or attach them with brass tabs).  This is a very good alternative for younger kids and makes a great big paper monkey they can hang up beside their bed!

If you chose to do it as a puppet (not just a paper craft), younger children (Age 2 thru 5) will have fun colouring the pieces and playing with the finished puppet.  However, the craft is really more suited to Age 5+ if you want them to work fairly independently as it's quite a bit longer of a project and gets a bit fiddly at the end.

Suggestion from a viewer.  Thanks!
Gayla wrote: "You know how you suggest using the straws on the legs, tail, and one arm? I happened to cut the part of the straw that has the rigid part that bends and I used that to connect the pieces.  The result is that you can "bend and shape" the legs, tail and arm because the rigid part of the straw holds shape."

 

Materials you will need for the puppet are

• two long (2 ft) pieces of wool or string   (the smaller the kids, the shorter you should make it...  You can always shorten it later if you need to),
• a few shorter snippets of wool or string
• OPTIONAL:  straws (Gayla wrote that flex straws are neat to use.)
• a printer,
• glue,
• scissors,
• something to colour or paint with
• some poster board or cardboard (empty cereal boxes work great and we recently discovered frozen food dinner boxes also work *grin*)
• and 4 pieces of paper .

Instructions:

• Print out the template (4 Templates).
• Cut the template pieces out
  • doesn't have to be exact at this point, because we'll have to cut the pieces out again. 
  • This is a good time for younger kids to do the cutting. 
  • Just tell them to cut about an inch or two outside the lines.
    
• Glue the pieces to the cardboard, SEPARATELY (don't try to make it look like a monkey yet)
• Color or paint the template pieces as appropriate (you don't really need to wait until the glue dries, but you certainly can!).
• OPTIONAL:  You can glue bits of brown wool onto the body if you want to add some texture to the project.
• Once dry, cut out the template pieces (this is where an adult will come in handy... cardboard is a bit tougher to cut through).   
• Turn the pieces all face down and assemble them on the table to look like a monkey, leaving about an inch between each piece.  
  • You can position the tail a number of different ways (hanging down, pointing up, out to one side)
  • You can also substitute a braided rope/wool tail for the paper template piece if you are teaching your child how to braid.
• Take snippets of string and drinking straws and tape them to connect the pieces -- use straws to connect the tail, legs and one arm.  Use string to connect the other arm.  (see the picture below for what I did with the dinosaur...  It's the same idea for the monkey)

• Take your 2 long strings and glue/tape them to the back of the head and to one arm (the arm you attached with string)
• Now lay it down on the table and stretch the strings up.
    
  • Measure and trim so the strings are the right height for your child (leaving enough to make loops in the end of the string) and
  • so the strings are all the same length with the monkey positioned normally. 
• Tie loops in the ends of the string to put your hands through (or just tie the ends of the string to make one big loop). 
• Once everything including the string attachments are completely dry, you can make your monkey puppet jump on the bed!

Head/Body template   (color)   (B&W)

Arm template   (color)   (B&W)

Arm/Tail template   (color)   (B&W)

Legs template   (color)   (B&W)