I have always wanted to have my students spend more time making dimensional things, without getting into a lot of expense or heavy prep work. This project worked really well last week as it took just a few boxes of popsicle sticks, one bag of packing material and one pad of pattern paper to create over 500 stick puppets.
PREP: I opted to tape the two sticks together myself with masking tape to save some time. I also used a 2″ circle punch to quickly make a lot of skin colored circles.
1. Students were to choose a circle for their head, draw features with a pencil, and trace them with a thin black marker. When complete, they used a glue stick to attach it to the top of the stick.
2. Using this eco-shredded paper (Staples carries it) they applied glue to the back of the head, and individually attached strands of the paper hair. Gluing hair on the front was an option, but I liked gluing from the back as it kept the glue off the face. Boys could attach long hair and then give themselves a haircut.
3. Pads of pattern paper can be found at JoAnn’s or Michael’s on sale quite often, look for ones with very small scale prints. I showed the students that if they layed their stick person down on the back side of their paper, and first drew the shape of the shirt or dress, they were much more likely to have the clothes fit.
4. Arms could be added at the very end and glued to the backs of sleeves.