Hand puppet for the theater. How to make a home puppet theater

Do you and your child love fairy tales and interesting stories? How about getting together and spending time with the whole family? Do you want to arrange a small holiday for yourself in the middle of everyday life? Then it's time for home theater! Organizing a performance is not that difficult and can become a fun game in itself. Today we'll show you exactly how to do it and offer some great ideas to get you inspired.

The day of the performance is very exciting and filled with pleasant chores for the whole family. It will be interesting for everyone, young and old, to participate in the preparation: dad can be entrusted with constructing the stage, and older children will probably want to draw a poster and get some kind of role.

It’s great to play the theater on a cloudy and rainy day, when you don’t feel like going outside and want to spend time at home in a fun, interesting and useful way. Although on a fine day at the dacha you can stage a performance in the fresh air. And this is great entertainment during the holidays, when other families with children come to visit you.

Choose together what kind of performance you will stage. It is better to choose simple plots that are familiar and interesting to the child. For example, folk tales (“Kolobok”, “Teremok”, “Turnip”), stories and poems from the child’s favorite books are well suited.

A very important and exciting part of the preparation, which in itself can become an educational game, is drawing posters and tickets. Tickets are simply small pieces of paper with “Ticket” written on them. Instruct your child to deliver tickets to the spectators; for him this will be an honorable duty. The poster can be drawn small on an A4 sheet, or on a larger paper format, then the main part is drawn by adults and older children. Be sure to write the name in large letters. You can draw characters or a scene from a fairy tale, indicate the names of the actors.

In the meantime, the actors can prepare, remember the fairy tale, and adults will come to their aid. We have already written before how to help your child memorize simple poems.

Setting up the stage

Preparing a stage for a home theater with your own hands is a very responsible and creative task that will take time, and it is better to plan it for one of the days before the performance. All your efforts will certainly be worth it, because a beautiful and thoughtfully made stage will be useful to you for games more than once.

You can make a stage out of a box - either a large one from under household appliances or a small one, for example, from under dishes or toys, then you will get a mini-theater. Decorate the stage to your and your baby’s taste and build a curtain. You can prepare the backdrop and decorations specifically for the performance. Here are some ideas on how you can do this.

An even simpler option is a curtain in the doorway, especially if you know how to sew.

Or you can simply cover a couple of chairs or a table with a blanket - and the stage is ready!

Making doll actors

Another interesting and very easy to implement idea is to draw faces or muzzles on plastic spoons.

Many kids like finger puppets. By playing with them, we also train fine motor skills. Mother craftsmen can sew or knit such dolls. Or you can cut them out of ordinary household gloves in a couple of minutes or simply draw faces on your fingers.

Home shadow theater

A shadow theater performance is always a special sacrament. Meanwhile, adding a little magic to your life is not so difficult. First we need to make a screen. For this, a lid from a box (for example, a shoe box) is useful, in the wall of which we cut out a window and glue a sheet of paper (regular office paper or tracing paper) on top. In addition, you can use white fabric as a screen in the doorway. We cut out figures for the shadow theater from cardboard. You can draw them yourself, print templates from the Internet or buy ready-made ones. The cardboard figurine will need to be attached to a stick, for example, from Chupa Chups.

You can also get shadows of animals using your hands. On a sunny day or in a dark room with a table lamp on, show your baby how to do this. And this is also a great way to stretch your fingers.

Well, that’s all, the preparations are over, the guests are in place, the lights go out, and the stage is illuminated by a table lamp. Support the little puppeteer, because he is very worried at this moment. And be prepared to take on most of the performance yourself. If a child stumbles somewhere, help and catch him. The performance itself can be very short, a few minutes. In any case, the family will be delighted and will not be stingy with praise and applause, because everyone did a great job!

Polina Kondratyuk

To perform home performances with your children with your own hands, read our article.

Got a shoe box lying around? Don’t rush to throw it away, because this is a wonderful material for making interesting ones. We wrote earlier, . Today we will share with you an idea on how to turn an ordinary box into a puppet theater with lights. The manufacturing process itself will bring great pleasure to everyone, and the impromptu performance will be wonderful even when the lights go out.

They don’t require huge expenses, the main thing here is imagination and imagination. Involve kids already at the stage of creating the theater: older children can prepare the box with you, and younger ones can draw, decorate and play. Well, you can’t do without the heroes of plays in your cardboard home either: penguins, dinosaurs, even everyone can take part in the play.

To make a puppet theater out of cardboard with your own hands, you will need:

• shoe box with lid;
• 1 piece of cardboard (from another box) size A3;
• 1 sheet of white copy paper;
• 2 sheets of dark and dark blue A4 size paper;
• 5 or 6 wooden sticks;
• 1 small LED garland (up to 10 lights);
• small wooden beads;
• ruler;
• stationery knife;
• craft tray;
• scissors (children);
• felt-tip pens (black and colored);
• pencil;
• scotch;
• PVA glue;
• hot glue gun.

How to make a puppet theater from a cardboard box with your own hands

Make a mark on the bottom of the box and cut it out as in the picture. Draw 3-4 lines along the long part of the box and cut out holes using a utility knife. The holes should be wider than the wooden sticks for the theater characters.

To make a platform stage, mark and cut the same lines on a slightly smaller piece of cardboard that will fit inside. Cut two pieces to fit between the stage and the bottom of the cardboard theater so that the platform is level with the bottom of the box.

Be sure to test the sticks at this stage; they should move easily in the slots. If this fails, widen the incisions slightly. Afterwards, glue the two separating parts and the platform, and also drip glue onto the beads and glue them onto the sticks.

Now move on to decorating the theater. Use a shoebox lid as a backdrop for your future puppet theater. For an arctic theme, use blue and white paper. For snow, cut (tear) the paper into pieces. Kids will especially like this activity.

Cut out three small pieces of cardboard, decorate them with blue and white paper in an arctic style, and glue them to the “stage” for an ice block effect.

It's time to create snow actors! Draw a few penguins and a whale yourself or give the children a task (puppet characters come out well from children's drawings). Color them with your children and cut them out.

Using tape, attach the finished figurines of the characters of the future play to wooden sticks.

Make several holes in the theatrical background using one of the sticks and tuck the garland there.

Lead the garland wire back behind the cover. Now it's time to turn off the lights, turn on the fairy lights and start playing!

Look who is making his way to us through the snow and blizzard. All the other characters were scared of the dinosaur, so it's time to make a second box.

Making such a do-it-yourself puppet theater with your children will be remembered for all the fun and good time spent with your family. Create new characters for home plays, use a cardboard theater as part of it, or create several scenes for different plays - get creative and have fun with your children.

It just so happens today that children spend most of their time in front of the monitor.

Parents are sometimes touched by watching how skillfully a two-year-old child uses a keyboard or a ten-year-old son sits quietly at home, not getting lost in the middle of nowhere. Over time, the computer replaces books, sports and even communication in the family. The time has come to sound the alarm: even the most advanced construction kits and robot dolls cannot compete with the Internet.

In search of an alternative to a harmful hobby, adults often forget about such a magical art as puppet theater. After all, young and even older children are not at all indifferent to performances with dolls. They adore simple and clear performances with a funny plot, long-familiar characters and a happy ending.

Take your children to puppet theaters more often? That's not bad either. But we are talking about the child’s behavior at home. After all, it’s not at all difficult to make dolls with your family, at no cost, in a cozy, friendly home environment. And even organize the most interesting performances. Here the children themselves will have to persuade their parents to play their favorite game.

Finger theater and child development

From the age of two, a child can retell a fairy tale or part of a dialogue he knows. He is very involved in the game and at the same time his speech is developed by the finger hero of the fairy tale. The child himself speaks for the bunny, for the wolf, for the fox. You can make such dolls with your own hands from paper.

Paper puppet theater

The simplest theater is a paper one. Every mother can make it with her own hands. It’s easy to do this even on the road or while walking. Creating finger puppets begins with drawing characters. This is a separate interesting process, and you can and should involve your child in it. But it’s easier and faster to create an entire puppet theater by printing ready-made doll templates, of which there are quite a lot on the Internet. And then we only need scissors and glue.

There is a flat and round finger theater, and both do not require much preparation. In the first case, these are the heads or the upper half of the pupa, which are placed on each finger using a paper tube. You don’t even have to make the doll’s head separately, but simply glue together bright tubes or even cones.

Before connecting the edges of the future tube, we create an image. To do this, we glue beaded eyes, sponges, antennae, wings, handles, clothes and other character attributes onto the blanks. The ears can be immediately planned on the pattern. Such dolls can be put on all fingers at once and create a real little show, playing with both hands.

Absolutely indispensable on a long journey and in a long line for entertaining the baby. And the child will not demand your iPhone, but will rather enthusiastically talk with the hero fingers or play out various scenes: from life, from the same computer game, or invented by him.

In the second case, the drawings have two holes for fingers and are glued to cardboard. The fingers inserted into the slots are the doll’s legs, which move and “revive” it. Only one such doll can fit on one hand, sometimes two.

Theater made of paper on wooden sticks

A puppet theater can be made no less interesting if, instead of fingers, you attach the characters of the play to sticks intended for examining the throat. Popsicle sticks are also great. Fairy-tale characters can be drawn or cut out from old color magazines and then pasted onto cardboard. Puppets on a stick will move in the slots of the landscape prepared for the performance. This scene is very easy to make from a piece of cardboard.

We color it according to the plot: like a clearing, a river bank or something else. The river itself, for example, can be replaced by a blue scarf thrown into such a clearing. Taking a stationery knife, we make several small cuts on the bottom side of the cardboard on the left and right and also, for example, below the left one. The openings for acting out the plot must accommodate two dolls at the same time.

Paper theater on plastic spoons

Plastic spoons can serve as an excellent material for a mini puppet theater using paper. You can glue bright pictures onto their convex “faces,” wrap paper strip scarves around their “necks,” and even put on paper dresses—the characters are ready for the play!

Tabletop paper theater on plastic cups, corks, cubes

Have you noticed that children sometimes just assign some cubes, corks or plastic cups to the role of dolls? Such is the power of their imagination! What if you stick appliqués depicting people or animals onto such items and play a little with your child?

The cubes are interesting because each face is decorated with a paper portrait of a new hero. You will get such a multi-faceted toy. With the help of paper, cups, corks and cubes will turn into a real puppet theater, and the game itself will become much more colorful and interesting. Most children will spend a long time acting out fairy tales and scenes from life, even without our participation. The “troupe” can be replenished endlessly or easily replaced with new characters.

A tabletop theater helps develop the child’s imagination, expressive, and coherent speech. With a little imagination, every adult, and following his example, a child, will be able to come up with and make with their own hands new interesting versions of their own paper puppet theater. For example, from paper bags or papier-mâché.

In a home theater, unlike other theaters where he mainly enjoys the spectacle, the baby can speak out. And here he receives the attention of his parents. And adults should carefully listen to the conversations the dolls are having in their child’s hands.

Home puppet theater is a good way to develop a child. In particular, the project promotes the development of speech, imagination, and fine motor skills. At the same time, dolls have an excellent psychotherapeutic effect, since they can help a child cope with his fears and worries, as well as receive the attention that is sometimes so lacking. You can make a puppet theater for kindergarten with your own hands, and this applies not only to dolls, but also to screens and decorations.

Making dolls

Dolls can be made from completely different materials, including scrap materials. However, their size is not important. They can be finger-shaped, in the form of gloves or stationary figures.

Felt finger characters

Finger puppets allow you to develop your child’s fine motor skills, thinking and speech. Making miniature dolls is very simple. To do this, you need to prepare the following tools and materials:

• felt;
• threads;
• scissors;
• pattern paper;
• pencil.

You can draw the pattern for the character yourself. To do this, it is first recommended to choose a fairy tale or story that will be staged, and then carefully think through its characters. After this, you can start making characters:

When making finger puppets, you should immediately decide who will wear them. If this is a child, then the holes in the dolls should be such that the characters do not fall off during the performance.

Modeling paste

A good material for making dolls can be a special modeling paste. It can be replaced with salt dough or plasticine. The advantages of this material are that it can be used to make both finger puppets and stationary puppets. To make characters you need to prepare:

The sculpting process is quite difficult for a child, so an adult needs to be shown step by step how to make this or that figurine. At the same time, it is still worth leaving the child the opportunity to express his imagination. If a human figurine is needed for staging, you can sculpt it as follows:

1. From a piece of pasta measuring 2*3 cm you need to roll a sausage and then form it into a cylinder. His figure should resemble a matryoshka doll with a torso and head. Make a notch at the bottom of the cylinder for your finger.
2. Separately sculpt the arms that need to be attached to the body.
3. All facial features can be made using a plasticine stack or knife.
4. You can paint the character after the paste has dried and hardened.

Paper fairy tale heroes

Paper dolls are very easy to make, but they can be disposable because they tear easily during use. The size of the dolls depends on personal preference. They can be worn on a finger or the entire hand. To make a paper doll, you can cut out special templates along the contour, and then glue them in pairs so that both the back and the back sides match the characters. There is an easier way to make paper dolls:

1. You need to glue a small tube from a sheet of colored paper by twisting the sheet and gluing it along the edge. Its dimensions depend on the type of puppet theater. The doll can be worn on a finger or be stationary
2. On the resulting blanks you need to glue elements of the face and hands depending on the character.

It's better not to throw away plastic spoons

You can also make dolls from scrap materials. Plastic spoons do an excellent job of this. For such characters you need to prepare:

Additionally, you may need ready-made plastic eyes, as well as felt-tip pens or markers. After preparing all the necessary tools, you can proceed directly to making dolls. To do this you need:

1. Glue or draw eyes on the convex side of the spoon.
2. Wrap the fabric around the handle of the spoon and tie it with a ribbon to make a dress. If a male character is being made, then a bow tie can be glued at the junction of the handle and the convex part of the spoon.
3. Make hair from colored paper. To do this, cut a fringe on one side of the strip, and then glue the whole part to the convex part of the spoon.

You can also use other available materials. For example, you can make smeshariki from disks with your own hands or take ice cream sticks.

Socks will help

You can very quickly make a puppet theater out of socks with your own hands. To make such characters, you must adhere to the following instructions:

Decorations for performances

Particular attention must be paid to the decorations. The easiest way to make them is from thick cardboard. To do this, you need to draw the required element on cardboard and then cut it along the contour. Additionally, you need to glue clothespins to the decoration, which will be used to attach the decorations to the screen. It is recommended to disguise them, since the fasteners cannot spoil the appearance of the stage or attract attention to themselves. Therefore, the clothespins should be disguised as part of the decoration, for example, as a figurine of a flower or mushroom. The number of clothespins depends on the size of the decoration itself.

Theater screen

The screen is the basis of the puppet theater in kindergarten. Its appearance depends on the type of theater. This could simply be a fabric curtain that can be used to cover the hole under the table. In this case, all actions will take place at the level of the table top. You can also make a dollhouse out of fabric with your own hands, the patterns for which you can draw yourself. If you are making a finger puppet theater with your own hands or using glove puppets, then you will need a table screen. It can be made from different materials.

A plywood screen will turn out to be very light, and it will last for many years. To make it you need to prepare:

• plywood;
• jigsaw;
• wallpaper or fabric;
• door hinges.

1. Cut 3 blanks from the main material, that is, one central part and two sidewalls. They need to be covered with fabric or wallpaper.
2. After all three parts are dry, they need to be connected using door hinges. This will allow you to close the screen and fold it.

In a similar way, you can make a screen from cardboard. However, it is recommended to make it three-layer, which will significantly increase the strength of the structure. It is not necessary to connect the parts with door hinges; they can simply be sewn together.

The age of children who go to kindergarten places special demands on the action itself. For a theatrical performance, it is recommended to choose simple, uncomplicated plots that are nevertheless capable of teaching important life things. Gradually, the repertoire can be increased, while periodically returning to already staged performances. The peculiarity of children is that they quickly get tired and stop paying attention to some subject. This means that the duration of the performance should not exceed 10-15 minutes. Additionally, you can use musical accompaniment.

A puppet theater in kindergarten will help not only to reveal the talents of each child, but also to unite the team. And not only at the stage of staging fairy tales, but also in the process of making dolls. The children will definitely be delighted and will definitely not forget the emotions they felt at these moments.

Attention, TODAY only!

Probably everyone loves to go to the puppet theater and watch wonderful performances with amazing puppets. Visiting it is always a holiday, especially for children. Therefore, you can organize a small puppet theater at home, a children’s version of it. Create DIY children's puppet theater easy, especially if the whole family helps. A minimum of materials will be required, and adults and children will enjoy its creation and participation in subsequent performances.

: child development in play

Home theater is very useful for children's development. Here they, together with adults, can work on the performance, trying to make it as good and interesting as possible. Later, they will be able to stage plays themselves, inviting guests and parents to the performances. This develops children's imagination and responsible attitude towards any work.

And finally, making a theater is a very big and painstaking job. Children must take part in it. This is how they get involved in work and learn to create complex and interesting crafts. They understand that they are in a team and are doing something common and necessary for everyone. And this is very useful.

Will a child be interested in puppet theater at home? Will he want to take part in its creation, and then in the performances? It is quite possible that he will not want to, and there are several reasons for this. Many children are quite passive; they try not to take on what they consider difficult work. Also, this work promises to be responsible, and not only children, but also many adults are afraid of responsibility. In addition, children can be shy; they are afraid of participating in performances.

In order to rid the child of these harmful qualities, with his new work, to achieve his interest. And for this you need to invite him to do everything together with his parents, encourage initiative, and under no circumstances raise his voice if something doesn’t work out for him.

Making a screen

For a puppet theater screen - . Without her it is impossible to stage a single performance. The screen can be anything, everyone creates it to their own taste. The only requirement for it is that it must be durable. This detail can be made very simply. Take a large piece of colored fabric. It’s good if it has a bright, interesting design. But you can also choose a plain fabric, onto which decorations are then sewn.