Homemade Puppet Theater! 小小木偶剧场

Like most little boys his age, my little captain talks well, sings well, dances well and even can cracks some jokes with us, but only when he's with the familiar faces. Once surrounded by stranger or he became the centre of attention, he will be extra quiet and refuse to speak up. I suppose stage fright is common among young kids his age (he's 4 years old) but I would really like to see him perform well in the coming school annual performance, hence I made a plan to help him build up his courage.

Instead of sending him to drama class, or anymore extra curricular activities apart from his preschool, I made this - a homemade puppet theater for him to put up a show. 

I picked a dark polka-dot wrapper, looking like a screen but infused with some fun feeling. 

Right after Big Guy and I setup the "home puppet theater" in our backyard, the duo were so excited and helped to get some stools to be the audience seats. See how they grabbed a preferred seat each and starred at the empty frame, how amusing :)

And we have to pay for the entrance tickets! Thanks to Big Guy who helped to design and print the cute looking tickets right before show began. :)

My little captain picked his Christmas music box to be his entrance fee collection box, pretty good choice I would say, as he used the music box for background music when he performed.

Big Guy and I had fun watching our little handsome performed, he came up with some funny story about the platypus and penguins knocking down a tree, well, I have no idea why they wanted to knock down the tree, but it was certainly fun to watch him trying hard and his confident growing stronger from his first virgin performance to the next ones which went a lot smoother. He was excited after the first round and offered to put on 2 more shows for us FOC. It is wonderful as parent to see our little one's confident smile.

Puppet show shall be one of our weekend activities from now onwards. Perhaps we shall host a gathering for him to perform his show to the friends and family, it would be interesting to see how he will handle the pressure. *evil laugh*

The making is easy, the materials you will need: 

• an TV/LCD size cardboard or styrofoam.

• 1-2 piece of wrapping paper with nice prints

• masking tapes

• some felt for the curtain (optional)

1. First, find the right size cardboard or styrofoam. I found this at my sister's house right before they discard it!

2. Using a knife or cutter, cut the frame for your home theater. Keep little one away while you are doing this in case they play with the knife while you're not watching.

3. Wrap it around with the wrapper of your choice, then tape them on tight.

4. Cut 2 small triangle pieces to hold the frame in place. Glue on tight. (That was my original plan, but big guy offered to make a special wooden stand instead. Well, his carpentry skill certainly came handy.

5. For the curtain, just cut 2 pieces of red felt and glue on to the top of the frame, tie them up using little ribbons. I skipped this step as my duo couldn't wait to begin the show, kept asking what time the show will start, LOL.

6. If you have some extra time, design a ticket with a value, great avenue to teach the little ones the concept of money.

That's all. It's a cheap and simple craft but do require a bit of work, this one took me approximate 45 minutes including the time i took to ponder on the design but extra 40 minutes for my big guy to make the wooden stand.

If you happen to make a puppet theater  too, feel free to post onto our Facebook page for sharing!

XOXOXO

PH

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