Make these colorful marionettes from toilet paper rolls. It's so fun to add your own decorations to add a personal touch. They can be any animal your child might have in mind! What a great craft for imaginary play! 

Materials:

String/Yarn

Hot Glue

Beads/Pom Poms

3 Toilet Paper Rolls (Empty)

2 Popsicle Sticks

Tissue Paper

Directions 

Step 1: To create handles, crisscross 2 popsicle sticks together and hot glue together.

Step 2: Cut 1 toilet paper roll in half, for the heads of your puppets. The other 2 paper rolls will be the bodies.

Step 3: Take your yarn/string and measure out a long piece to connect your head piece with your body piece.

Step 4: Poke a small hole at one end of the head piece and body piece. Pull the string ends through each hole and tie knots to hold the pieces.  Hot glue the middle of the string to the popsicle sticks.

Step 5: Measure a shorter piece of string to connect the head to the body. Poke holes on each of the pieces. Pull the string through and tie knots to both ends.

Step 6: Measure 4 medium length pieces of string the same length. Poke 4 holes on the bottom of the body, these will be the legs of the puppet. Place one end of all more string pieces through the holes and tie at the end.

Step 7: Decorate! Be creative and let your kids decorate how they like. Hot glue beads, pom poms, tissue paper rolled up or anything else you can think of.

Then you're done! Throw yourself a puppet how with your kids and have fun inside while it’s hot outside!

Jenna is a staff writer and production assistant at Creative Child Magazine. She is currently attending University of Nevada - Las Vegas.