Make a Puppet from a Stuffed Animal

**This idea originally came from Gena Mello**

 
Purchase a stuffed animal from a garage sale or second hand   store.
 It will need to be a fairly large stuffed animal.



Take a sewing seam ripper and carefully open the stomach along the seam. 
Remove some of the stuffing from the stomach.  Some animals need to be opened in the rump area.


 
Put your hand into the opening and you have a puppet.  If the puppet is
made with an open mouth, you can also open
the mouth and remove the stuffing.  If you do this, your puppet
will be able to "eat" objects. 

If you can find a cookie monster, it's fun to make felt cookies with colored chocolate chips.  Then ask the children to feed cookie monster a cookie with red chocolate chips and so on. You can also make cookies with a numbers or letters on them. 
If you can find a shark or large fish stuffed animal you can make it
into a puppet.  If the mouth opens, you can make small fish for it to eat. 
You can make a dinosaur puppet and feed it leaves (make sure it is a leaf eating variety)  The possibilities are endless.

Here are some other pages you might be interested in Glove Puppets
 Felt Board Ideas