Find out how to create puppet theater with your own hands. At the same time, characters can not only be sewn and molded, but also made from plastic spoons and wooden sticks.
DIY finger puppet theater
If you want to develop your baby’s fine motor skills, speech, thinking and simply be able to lift the mood of the whole family, then turn the room into a temple of art. To do this, you need to know how to make a finger puppet theater with your own hands.
For this you will need:
- felt;
- threads;
- scissors.
Fold 2 character blanks wrong sides together, sew along the edge using a machine or with a thread and a needle on your hands.
To make a beard for your grandfather, wrap several rows of thread around your fingers and cut them on one side. Fold these identical threads in half and sew the beard in place.
And here’s what the heroes of the fairy tale “The Ryaba Hen” might be like.
Cut out your grandfather's beard and bangs and grandmother's hair from gray felt. It will also help you create a mouse with a long tail. These are the kind of dolls you can sew for a puppet theater. If a baby will wear them, cut them so that they are the size of his fingers. If the performance will be performed for children by adults, then the fabric dolls should be slightly larger.
Check out one more interesting idea. This could be a home puppet theater for staging the fairy tale “Turnip”. IN kindergarten It's better to have larger characters so that the whole group can see them from afar. But you can do something like this by taking:
- modeling paste (preferably Jovi, which does not need to be burned; it hardens in air);
- yellow and green paste Jovi Patcolor;
- acrylic paints;
- tassels;
- markers;
- stacks.
- Let's sculpt the grandfather first. Take a piece of pasta measuring 2x3 cm, roll it into a sausage, and form a cylinder. You should get something like a nesting doll with a body and a head, and at the bottom there will be a notch for a finger.
- Separately sculpt the arms and attach them to the body. But outline the facial features, beard, and mustache using a stack.
- Using the same principle, sculpt the grandmother, granddaughter and animals. Once these characters are dry, paint them with acrylic paints.
- For the turnip, roll a ball of yellow paste, pull it out a little from the top, insert green plastic tops here, and secure.
When sculpting with paste, you will find that it dries quickly in the air, so periodically wet your fingers with water.
This is how you will get a finger puppet theater; with your own hands, a child will be able to act out the fairy tale “Turnip” or come up with his own plot with some of these characters.
DIY table theater
If you want to have a tabletop theater with paper dolls, then enlarge the following image. Print it on a color printer on thick paper. If this is not possible, attach a sheet of thin paper to the screen and transfer the outlines onto it. Then place it on cardboard, draw outlines, and let the child decorate the characters with colored pencils or paints. All that remains is to cut out the images, glue each on the side and glue the top of the head to the head.
And here are some more templates that can be used to easily make theater dolls. With your own hands or by giving the blanks to your child, cut them along the contours and glue them in pairs.
If a small rectangular sheet of colored paper is glued on the side, you get a small tube. It should be such that it fits well on your finger. Glue the ears, nose, eyes, front paws to the blank, and you will get a finger puppet theater hero.
These characters can be made from the most unexpected materials. See how to turn plastic spoons into stage plays.
To make these toys for the puppet theater, take:
- plastic spoons;
- colored paper;
- scissors;
- ready-made plastic eyes;
- glue gun;
- textile;
- narrow tape, scissors.
- Using a glue gun, glue the finished eyes to the convex side of the spoon.
- Turn a piece of fabric tied with a ribbon into a dress. For a male character, just glue a bow tie to his neck.
- Cut strips of colored fringe paper on one side and glue this hair. They will also be replaced by pieces of colored cotton wool.
Other characters are controlled in the same way, to create which you will need:
- ice cream sticks;
- children's magazines;
- glue;
- scissors.
If you want to make another tabletop theater, then milk bottle caps will come into play. Plastic yogurt cups.
Glue paper fairy tale characters to the back of these items, and you can play out old stories with them or invent new ones. The background is created from a large sheet of cardboard, which is painted to match the theme.
How to make a screen for a puppet theater?
This is an essential attribute of puppet theater. Check out the simplest options:
- Cover the hole under the table with a cloth, tying its two corners to the top of one and the other leg. The child sits on the floor behind him and leads the characters at the level of the table top - just above it.
- Take an old curtain or sheet. Gather any of these fabrics onto a rope, tie the ends of the thread on one and the other side of the doorway. Make a rectangular cutout in the center of the top of any of these pieces. It should be at such a height that it is not visible to a child or adult sitting behind the curtain who are playing the role of puppeteers.
- For finger theater a table screen is being made. The easiest way is to make it from cardboard. Take the box. It needs to be disassembled, covered with wallpaper or colored paper, and 2 sides bent so that a canvas of sufficient size remains in the center. There is a cutout in it through which the puppeteer shows finger toys.
Here's how to make a plywood screen. For it you will need:
- plywood;
- jigsaw;
- fabric or piece of wallpaper;
- glue;
- small door hinges.
- Based on the presented dimensions, cut out 3 blanks from plywood: a central one and 2 side panels. Cover them with fabric.
- When the canvas is dry, attach the loops to the designated areas so that you can close the puppet theater screen and fold it.
See how to make a screen out of cardboard so you can show performances with mitten, glove, and cane puppets. It should be such that the puppeteer can fit there freely, standing in full height. If the performance is performed by children of different ages, then the tall ones will kneel, placing a pillow under them.
In order to make a screen, you will need:
- PVA glue;
- rope or lace;
- cardboard boxes;
- wallpaper;
- stationery knife;
- awl;
- roulette;
- wide brush;
- long ruler;
- rag.
You can make a screen for a puppet theater with your own hands as follows:
- The drawing is given for teenagers or adults whose height is 1 m 65 cm. If you are making a screen for children, reduce this figure.
- To make it durable, make it three-layer. To do this, stick a second one on one large sheet of cardboard, then a third one on the other side. Apply PVA glue with a wide brush. This way you will make the front part - the apron.
- The side elements are also made in three layers, but the folds, which you then glue to the apron, should consist of one layer.
- Connect the parts by gluing them. When the glue has dried, sew in these places with a lace, having previously made holes in the fastening points. Attach the top arch in the same way.
All that remains is to wallpaper the screen dull color so that they do not distract from the theatrical performance.
We make do-it-yourself glove dolls
These can be seen in a real puppet theater. Dolls put gloves on their hands. By bending your fingers, you can make the fabric character tilt its head and move its arms.
A children's puppet theater will benefit from having many characters if you use the proposed template.
But it is not necessary to create all the heroes at once. Let's start with two - bunnies and piglets. Having understood how to make such doll gloves, you will be able to sew others, thereby gradually replenishing your theater.
If you then make human dolls, you can make the hairstyle from fabric or thread.
The thickness of the character's neck should be such that the puppeteer inserts his middle and index fingers here to control the hero of the play.
Before sewing puppets for the theater, place a puppeteer's glove on the re-cut pattern to decide whether the base is suitable. If not, then increase or decrease it. You can do without a glove by placing the puppeteer’s hand on the base pattern. Please note that the character will not be static, so you need to add a little on all sides for a loose fit so that the fabric of the action hero does not stretch while controlling him.
So, here's what you need to sew a glove doll:
- faux fur and/or plain fabric;
- tracing paper or transparent paper or cellophane;
- pen;
- scissors;
- threads;
- buttons for eyes.
Place the pattern on the fabric folded in half, cut with a 7 mm seam allowance. For a bunny it is better to take gray fabric or white fur, for a pig - pink.
If you want to draw facial features, tails, hands, hooves, then do it now, before sewing both halves of each character. Take special fabric paints that do not fade when washed. If there are none, then use watercolor, gouache, but first apply a PVA solution to the fabric, after it dries, paint this place, but use a minimum of water. When the paint is dry, add another layer of PVA on top to secure it.
But it is best to embroider the nose and mouth by stretching these areas onto a hoop or sewing blanks of the corresponding colors and eye buttons.
Cut out a shirtfront from white fur for the bunny glove doll, sew its triangular part to the front half, and the semicircular part, in the form of a collar, to the back half. The tail is attached to the same reverse side, and white paws with or without pink claws are attached to both parts.
When small parts are sewn on, you can sew both halves of the doll on the inside out using a machine or on the face using your hands. In the latter case, use an over-the-edge seam or take a tape of a matching color and edge the side seam with it.
Other glove dolls, for example, a pig, are also created using this technique.
When the sides are stitched on all sides, hem the bottom. The characters' ears can be stuffed with cotton wool or padding polyester. Fill the pig’s nose with any of these materials, only after that sew this “patch” to the head. Applique it on his cheeks, giving them a blooming look. It remains to sew a few yellow threads between the ears, and another glove doll is ready.
Now you know how to sew characters for a puppet theater, if you want to see this too, then watch the following stories.
The world outside the cardboard box is so interesting and impressive! But to feel new joys, you need to open your heart to friendship.
Parents often ask the question: at what age should they start going to the theater with their child? The sooner the better! Many children's theaters in Europe are passionate about productions for the little ones. But you don’t have to fly thousands of kilometers to introduce your children to the theater. After all, our “Teatrium” loves and knows how to work with the youngest audience...
This performance is made specifically for children over 3 years old. There are only 2 characters on stage, so it is easy for a small viewer to concentrate. In the 40 minutes that “The Cardboard Man and the Moth” lasts, a child’s attention will not have time to wander. In a chamber space New scene there is no fuss and a cozy atmosphere for viewing is created. And the conversation with the child in the play is conducted at the level of emotions and feelings. Simple and at the same time very honest. After all "The Cardboard Man and the Moth" is a wonderful and graceful story about friendship.
The child's toy world is placed in a simple box. But if you open it and take a closer look, in this box you will find the happy world of the Cardboard Man, who suddenly finds himself disturbed by an ordinary cheerful Moth. These completely different creatures become friends. But not right away...
Play -Laureate All-Russian festival theatrical arts « Tales on the land of Olonkho » (Republic of Sakha, Yakutsk) nominations for “Best musical design” and “Best scenography”.
Worked on the performance:
Author of the play and director- Olga Sidorkevich
Composer, arranger- Vladimir Zeynalov
Production designer- State laureate awards, folk artist RF Maria Rybasova
Costume designer- Honored Artist of the Russian Federation Victoria Sevryukova
Lighting designer- Honored Worker of Culture of the Russian Federation Vladimir Evstifeev
Choreographer- Honored Artist of the Russian Federation Svetlana Shishkina
Characters and performers:
Cardboard man- honorable art. FR Boris Ryvkin
Butterfly- Margarita Belkina
Lyudmila Slepykh
1. Tabletop theater toys
These are ordinary toys that children play with every day. You can buy them in a store, sew a soft toy with your own hands, or crochet them. Stage area - children's table or floor mat. The purpose of such shows is to entertain and please children, to make the doll more interesting for them, to help them add variety to their play activity. Pyramid - theater is good for developing thinking younger preschoolers, the construction process is accompanied by words from the fairy tale “Teremok”, “Turnip”. Children are especially fond of the talking owl, who tells fairy tales herself. Her children love to use in independent creative games.
2. Flat theater
This is a type of tabletop theater that can be made with your own hands from paper and cardboard or purchased ready-made from wood, plastic and other materials.
3. Theater on discs
4 Tabletop theater made of cones and cylinders
This type of puppet theater is often used, it gives children a lot of joy and pleasure, and creates in them good mood and is clearly reflected in their creative games. You can easily do it yourself.
5 Theater in a box
It can be flat, made of paper or three-dimensional (furniture, a field for games, the centerpiece of a box can serve as decoration. Such a theater is very easy to store.
6 Theater on spoons (clothespins, cups, sticks)
As practice has shown, children really like it and are easy to use. Very easy to do with your own hands.
7 Puppet theater "Bi-ba-bo"
The puppet theater "Bi-ba-bo" is also called the "Petrushki" theater. The dolls fit on three full fingers of the hand - like a glove. These dolls can be purchased at children's stores or made by yourself. The head can be made of different materials: wood, plasticine, a plastic ball, but usually papier-mâché. Or you can use old dolls or rubber toys that you may be planning to throw away.
8 Finger Theater
Actively used in 1st junior group. Attributes are worn on the fingers. A child or adult “plays” the character whose image is on the hand. As the plot unfolds, he acts with one or more fingers, pronouncing the text. You can depict actions while behind a screen or moving freely around the room. A variation is the origami theater.
9 Mitten Theater
Puppets of this type of theater are sewn from fabric, glued from paper or knitted from wool and thread. The character's face can be embroidered, glued or sewn on using buttons, beads, threads, ropes, pieces of wool, colored paper, fabric. Children play behind a screen or in direct contact.
10 Theater on the palms
With the help of paints and fabric, a child's hand turns into an original doll; playing with it delights children. Relevant for older children.
11 Costume theater
Costume or role-playing theater is theater where children (adults) take on the role of a chosen character. Children, with the help of an adult or independently, act out poems, riddles, small tales, dramatize songs. For better visibility, children need costumes. You can buy them in a store or sew them yourself.
12 Mood theater
This type of theater is intended for the emotional and intellectual development of children, to get acquainted with the 8 basic innate emotions. “Mood Theater” introduces children to the ABCs of expressing emotions and is a kind of psycho-gymnastics activity. Promotes the development of a better understanding of oneself and others, as well as voluntary attention and thinking. Mood theater helps a child learn to understand and evaluate the actions of other people, feel their mood, and develop such important qualities like sympathy and empathy.
13 Magnetic Theater
A type of flat tetra, fairy tale characters and decorations are attached to the board using magnets.
14 Theater "Stomping Dolls"
The image of the hero is attached to the back of the hand with an elastic band. Such a toy can “walk”, “run” and “jump” on the table, while its legs stomp, beating out any rhythm. It’s interesting to build dialogues, answer questions, and carry out commands.
15 Mask Theater
Sometimes putting on a mask is enough to turn a child into an actor. Masks can be made from foam rubber, paper, or purchased ready-made.
16 Tantamareski Theater
What else can amuse children more than tantamaresques! Tantamaresque is a doll with the face of an actor. They are used in comedic and humorous performances. With them you can visit a distant country or instantly transform into fairy tale hero. The Tantamoresk Theater promotes the development of imagination, communication and creativity. Children learn to improvise. build a dialogue. This type of theater is easy to make yourself, using cardboard boxes, thick sheets of paper on which the image of the characters is applied, and slits are made for the face. Used for speech development exercises, learning mini-dialogues, poems, and roles for plays.
17 Geometric Theater
This geometric theater will help introduce children to three-dimensional figures. Here, Boy Cube, Boy Ball, and Boy Cone, Miss Cylinder, came to visit us. The figures can be covered with fabric, covered with paper and decorated as dolls. You can play whole theatrical performances with their participation, involve children in acting out the plots, so children will remember the names of three-dimensional stories much faster geometric shapes and the learning process will be interesting and exciting.
In a corner of nature you can place the seasons from cylinders decorated in the form of dolls “Red Summer”, “Golden Autumn”, “Vesnyanka”, “Winter”. Tales about them will introduce children to seasonal changes in nature and help them understand why the same time of year can be sad and joyful.
18 Book Theater
Book theater is voluminous and moving pictures that will help to revive fairy tale characters. Comes to life on every page fairy world, built from paper. The dynamics and sequence of events are depicted using alternating illustrations. Turning over the sheets of the book stand, the teacher demonstrates personal stories depicting events and meetings. These can be diction exercises, tasks for developing intonation expressiveness, staging mini-dialogues and other types of activities.
19 Theatrical (life-sized) puppets
This type of theater is relevant for older preschoolers in dramatizing fairy tales and showing performances to adults. IN junior groups- for role-playing games.
20 Shadow Theater
Shadow theater is a joyful and welcome entertainment. Children love to watch how figures of people, animals and birds move on a brightly lit screen. The silhouettes of the figures are made of thin cardboard and painted black on one side. Some parts of the silhouettes (arm, leg, head, etc.) can be made movable (attached with thread or wire)
21 Carpet Theater
Children listen and watch illustrative storytelling with flannelgraph or carpet with great interest. They are amazed by the unusualness of the spectacle: the pictures do not fall, they stay on the board like magic. You can draw pictures for display yourself (these are plots or characters from fairy tales, stories, or you can cut them out of old books that can no longer be restored. They are glued onto thin cardboard, and with reverse side also stick flannel or Velcro
Creating a mini-museum allows me, as a teacher, to give a lot of knowledge about the art of theater: theater is a special, beautiful, magical, fairy-tale world. Everything is unusual in this world. Theater is always a fairy tale, a miracle, magic... But...
The ability to listen and hear, look and see is very important both for those on stage and for those in auditorium. The ability to hear the beauty of a poetic word, to evaluate the performance of their comrades - children learn these first difficult lessons while watching performances.
But no performance will find a response in the hearts of the audience if the speech is not clear and expressive. The problem of mastery of words is relevant today for all ages. And in theatrical productions the child begins to feel his strength and power, learns to “act with words.” To learn how to create a word from sounds, filling it with an exact thought, you need to early childhood. The habit of expressive public speech can be cultivated in a person only by involving him from an early age in speaking in front of an audience.
Who would have thought that in the 19th century, cardboard theater was one of the serious hobbies of adults living in Great Britain, Germany and Denmark. Puppet theaters performed scenes from real historical events. The hobby became widespread. Large cardboard boxes were carried out to the square on market days. Played live music. Wealthy parents could buy ready-made sets of cardboard performances and set up a theater at home. Pablo Picasso and Lewis Carroll created their own cardboard stages, inventing new plays for adults and children. Why not follow their example?
1 The theater begins...
Everything ingenious is simple! This also applies to your future. cardboard theater.
What you will need:
- shoe box
- scissors
- wallpaper cutter
- plain cardboard
- oil pastels (or colored pencils)
- tape (regular and double-sided)
- long bamboo sticks (as for canapés)
Work progress:
- Take a shoebox lid and cut out the middle to create a large window. Use tape to attach the lid to the box.
- Invite your child to paint the bottom of the box. These will be the background decorations. Oil pastels are perfect for this task.
- Using a wallpaper cutter, make slits in the “roof” of the future theater. They are needed to move self-made actors around the stage. Build columns and stucco molding - draw outlines on cardboard, cut them out, paint them and tape them to the front of the box.
2 Making decorations
If you have to depict a meeting of animals on the edge of a forest, let the child take cardboard, pencils and draw strawberry bushes - these are added decorations, make sure that there is a few centimeters of free space under each picture - the “extra tail” will be a support for the decoration. The strawberry bush can be placed both inside the theater and in front of it. This will create a three-dimensional, live action effect.
3 Recruiting actors
A very exciting moment for the baby. He will have to decide which characters will take part in his performance and how he will distribute the roles. Allow your child to fantasize to his heart's content. Let people and animals, animated coffee pots and flowers meet on the stage... It’s such happiness to create magic with your own hands! In an unobtrusive form, children develop thinking, learn projection, and create perspective. Cut out the finished characters and glue them to a bamboo stick using tape so that the actor remains on the bottom and the stick on top. Then, through the slots in the theater ceiling, slide each character into the box. The actors must be clearly visible. Check the height of the sticks. They should not fall on their side.
4 Hurray, rehearsal!
Discuss in advance what will happen on stage. Make a list characters. Let the little one think about what the characters will be like. Magpie - cunning, wearing bright beads. The boy is kind, wearing a blue Panama hat. This way it will be more interesting for him and you to play with intonation and demonstrate the behavior of the characters on stage. It may take several days to prepare for the performance. The reward for long rehearsals will be the applause of friends and relatives.
5 Secrets of a graphic designer
▸ Oil pastel - ideal option for kids. Bright, rich colors are easily read by children early age. It does not slip out of your hands and allows you to create a character with just a few strokes.
▸ Felt pens are one of my favorite “tools” junior schoolchildren. It is preferable to use felt-tip pens to draw butterflies in the bouquets of young ladies, specks on the ties of mustachioed gentlemen, beads on the neck of a magpie - spectators from the mezzanine will be able to see everything.
▸ Colored pencils are timeless classics. When choosing, pay attention to the stylus. It should not be dry, as if scratching the paper. If the resulting character comes out pale and barely noticeable, the child may be upset. Choose pencils with thick, soft leads.
6 Simple plots for performances
Forest history
▸ The Hedgehog meets Squirrel, she cries - Magpie stole a letter from the Bunny with an invitation to the ball.
▸ The Bunny appears, and everyone rejoices at the meeting and has fun.
▸ The magpie is embarrassed, she asks for forgiveness, the animals make peace.
Sea adventure
▸ The dog runs to the beach and plays with a ball.
▸ A boy and mother appear, leave their things, and go for a swim.
▸ The crab dresses up in a boy's Panama hat and hides behind a stone.
▸ The dog finds a crab, everyone laughs and has a picnic.
7 Create dolls
- Make the characters about five centimeters in size.
- Clearly highlight facial expressions on the characters’ faces.
- Avoid thin and difficult to cut parts.
- Use double-sided tape for fastening.
- Attach the actors to the bamboo stick from below.
- For complex decorations, you may need two bamboo sticks at once.
8 Why is this necessary?
As in the time of William Shakespeare, so now acting- deep psychological work person above you. Observe how your child behaves during rehearsals and performances. If there are several children in the family, this is an excellent opportunity to sort out “old” grievances and strengthen friendly relations between brothers and sisters. A fight over a scooter, jealousy towards your sister, self-doubt... You will be surprised, but during such a simple game you can work wonders not only on a homemade stage, but also in the soul of a child. Make a theater, write plays, and before you know it, your children will become calmer and more enthusiastic.
Photo: ShutterStock/Fotodom.ru; nikolasm/Fotolia.com; niradj/Fotolia.com/pixabay.com
