Feathery Finger Puppets

• Little Regent Nursery
• Crafts

Feathery Finger Puppets

Finger puppets have a quiet advantage over most crafts: the making takes fifteen minutes, but the playing goes on for weeks. And because the puppet does the talking, children who are shy about speaking up will often say a great deal more through a small paper bird than they ever would as themselves.

These feathery ones are deliberately simple. A tube of card, a couple of feathers, two eyes, and you are done.

What you need

• Coloured card cut into strips about 6cm by 8cm
• Craft feathers in two or three colours
• Wobbly eyes, or small circles of white and black paper
• A small triangle of orange or yellow card for each beak
• Sticky tape and a glue stick

How to make them

1. Make the tube. Wrap a card strip around your child's finger, not too tightly, and tape the seam. Check the fit before you decorate - a puppet that will not go on is a short-lived puppet.

2. Add the wings. Glue one feather to each side of the tube, pointing backwards. A dab of glue at the quill end holds best.

3. Add a tail. One or two more feathers at the back, fanned out. This is the part children always want more of, so buy a generous packet.

4. Fold the beak. Fold the small triangle in half and glue one side flat to the front of the tube so the other side sticks out.

5. Add the eyes. Two eyes above the beak. Set them wide for a surprised bird, close together for a grumpy one - a detail worth pointing out, because it is a child's first taste of showing feeling through a face.

Turning puppets into a story

Make three, not one. A single puppet has nobody to talk to. With three, your child has a family, an argument and a rescue. Try giving each bird a different voice and a name, then setting them a simple problem: one has lost a feather, one is frightened of flying, one has found something enormous. Ask your child what happens next and follow wherever they take it.

What it builds

Rolling, taping and gluing at this scale is precise work for a small hand. But the real value sits in communication and language, and in personal and social development: taking turns to speak, imagining how someone else feels, and rehearsing tricky situations in a place where nothing is at stake. It is the same reason puppet shows appear so often in our own weekly timetable.

At Little Regent Nursery in Tawam, Asharej, puppets and role play are everyday tools for drawing out children who are still finding their voice. Get in touch to arrange a visit and watch a story session with us.