Make Your Own Halloween Bat Puppet
Published on: October 23, 2019
Halloween is a great time to get creative with the kids. Donatella Lazzari shares a simple and fun idea to try. Happy Halloween!
By Donatella Lazzari
Make your own bat puppet by following the template design below (or just by drawing up your own) and assembling the parts following these simple instructions.
Materials 
Template
Paper fasteners
Popsicle stick
Glue
Adhesive tape
Scissors
Hole punch
Pencils, colored pens
Black card in A4 size
White and red paper
Googly eyes
Instructions
1. Once you have printed out the puppet template, you can ask your child to help you either:
i. glue it on a piece of card, color it in and cut it out, or,
ii.cut it out, trace the patterns on the black card, then cut out the black patterns.
The puppet needs to be fashioned out of heavy card: simple paper will not be strong enough – you can recycle card from packaging (i.e. biscuits or cereal boxes) or paper shopping totes.
2. Once you have all your parts cut out – one body, two wings, and two feet – punch two holes on each wing and one on each side of the body, as shown on the template. If you don’t have a hole punch a sharp pencil will do the job.
3. Now work on the front of the bat: ask your child to decorate it by gluing on googly eyes, cut out paper mouth and fangs. If you have used white paper, just let your child color in the patterns.
4. Next connect the wings to the body with a paper fastener (these can be found at stationery shops like B2S). If you don’t have paper fasteners you can make do by tying the holes together with a short piece of string.
5. Now work on the back of the bat: 1) glue the popsicle stick – you might want to secure it with adhesive tape too; 2) tie together the second set of holes on the wings. To do this use a long piece of string: when you tug on the excess length of the string the wings will flap, whilst being held in place by the paper fasteners.
Your puppet is now ready for play!
You can adapt this template to create different kinds of birds – owls, parrots, etc. or just try creating your own people patterns for example by replacing wings and claws with arms and legs shapes.
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