Sock Puppets Tutorial

Sock puppets are easy to make and are a great way to add to your bag of teacher tricks.

Sock Puppets - Sock puppets are easy to make and cheap. You can add all kinds of features to make an endless assortment of puppets to capture a child’s interest.  Start by saving miss match socks that every household has. 

You will need: sock, hot glue gun, hot glue, felt, cardboard from cereal box, yarn, package bows, feathers, pom poms, wiggle eyes, buttons, pipe cleaners, craft foam shapes, scrap lace, sequins cotton balls, batting and fabric paint.

Step1

Save a single clean sock. The sock needs to be large enough to fit loosely over a hand.

Step 2

Cut cardboard from cereal box into an oval shape to form the mouth piece.  Fold the oval in half.

Step 3

 Insert the folded mouthpiece into the sock so that the curved ends are facing the toe end of the sock. If it is too big, cut the piece smaller to fit so that it doesn't stretch the sock too much. 

Step4

Place hand in sock with thumb and fingers working like a mouth.  Push sock inward against the cardboard cut out, forming the mouth.  Glue in place.

 Step5

Cut mouth piece out of felt and glue to sock.

Step 6

Stuff the head area with some cotton balls to raise up the face area.

Step7

Hot glue items onto your sock to form your caricature.  

                              

F is for Frogs

Frog Pond Water Play

Cut out a supply of lily pads out of craft foam, add plastic frogs and small fish nets to the water tables or water tubs.

Jump Frog  Jump book with props

Find different items such as bean bag toys and small soft dolls to create a story tell kit for the children to retell the story on their own.

Color Frog Sorting Mats 

Make a supply of color mats for the children to sort all the different color frogs with.

Five Little Frogs Story Telling Glove 

Make a story telling glove out of craft foam and wiggle eyes.

Jump Frog Jump Color Floor Game  by Learning and Teaching with Preschoolers 

Counting Frog Math Mats   by Kids World Exploration 

Props for the Circle Time    by Learning and Teaching with Preschoolers

Frog Art   by Learning and Teaching with Preschoolers 

Bee Finger Puppet

I have created a new friend to go in my transition tool belt.

With the school budgets as they are it is harder and harder to be able to order materials for the classroom.  So with that in mind we (myself and other teachers in our program) have created a bee puppet using a yellow dish glove, white lace, wiggle eyes and black rick rack.  The total coast for 10 bee finger puppets was about $5.00.  That means that our finger puppet only coast us $0.50.  Not only did we save money for our classroom but we also had a lot of fun working together to create fun finger puppets for our classroom.  

Here is the song that will go with the new bee finger puppet.  I will be using the bee and song to transition children from cleaning up time, to lining up to go outside.

Buzz, Buzz Bumblebees 

Buzz, buzz bumblebees,
Flying all around.
Stop stand still, do not move around.
Shh, don’t make a sound.


Buzz, buzz bumblebees


Hurry up, in the jar
Before they sting your hand.


Buzz, buzz bumblebees
Hold your jar real tight.
We will carry them outside
Then let them all take flight

Teaching Letter Knowledge in Preschool

Over the last few years our school district has really wanted their early childhood program to concentrate on language and literacy development. So to meet the needs of the district and the children that we serve in our classrooms the decision was made to incorporate a letter study in our weekly curriculum.



In this letter study we would be working on letter knowledge, phonemic awareness and concepts of print, since early skills in alphabetic serve as a strong predictor of reading success.


Letter Knowledge


Letter knowledge- is knowing that letters are different from each other and that each letter has a different name and sound.


What are we looking for?
That each child has the ability to tell the name of the letter and what sound it makes.


Why is letter knowledge important?
In order for children to read written words they must have an understanding that each word is made up of individual letters and that each letter has its own sound to form the word.


Phonemic Awareness and Phonics


What is Phonemic Awareness?
Knowing that words are comprised of a sequence of spoken sounds


What is Phonics?
The relationship between written letters and their sounds


What strategies can we use to teach Phonemic Awareness and Phonics?
• Phonological Awareness (Hearing individual sounds in words)
• Phonemic Isolation (Identifying and manipulating sounds)
• Phonemic Identity (Recognizing same sounds in a different word)
• Phonemic Categorization (Recognizing words that don’t belong)
• Segmenting (Breaking a word into its separate sounds)
• Rhyming
• Blending (Putting together separate sounds)


To make learning about letter knowledge fun for the children and to keep them engaged in the process I created a puppet for introducing the letters and the letter sounds.

I named her Lilly Letter Lady. This puppet allowed me to be repetitive with the learning process. She also was able to become child like and funny about learning the letters. I found that the children were eager to learn about the letters when they knew that Lilly Letter Lady was coming for a visit.

Here is how it works

Lilly letter lady introduce new letters of interest. She sings the Found a Letter song with the children and introduces new letter sounds using items that begin with that sound. Children help Lilly Letter Lady identify all the objects that are in her bag of tricks.

Found a Letter

(tune: Found a Peanut)


Found a letter, Found a letter,
Found a letter "C" Today.
Oh, Today I found a letter,
Found a letter "C" Today.
(Use any letter in place of "C".)
~ Author Unknown

Each bag has the letter on the front with pictures that begin with that letter sound. 

Turkey Time

It is always fun to bring a holiday twist to finger play songs by just changing a few works to fit what you might be teaching about.  Here are a few songs that will go along with Thanksgiving and turkeys.

 Five Little Turkeys (song to the tune Five Little Ducks)



Five little turkeys went out to play
Over the fence and far away
Mother Turkey called gobble, gobble, gobble
And only four little turkeys
Came waddling back


Four, Three, Two, One


Lonely mother turkey
Went out one day
Over the fence and far away
The lonely mother turkey said
Gobble, gobble, gobble
And all the five little turkeys came waddling back.




Five Little Turkeys


Five little turkeys by the barn door,
One waddled off, then there were four.

Four little turkeys out under the tree,
One waddled off, then there were three.


Three little turkeys with nothing to do,
One waddled off, then there were two.


Two little turkeys in the noonday sun,
One waddled off, then there was one.


One little turkey - better run away!
Soon will come Thanksgiving Day!

Crafting for Teaching



I always enjoy making prop that will help enhance the children experience.




Here is what you will need:


Brown knitted glove from Target or Wal Mart (2 pairs for $1.50 right now)
Light Brown felt sheet
Dark Brown felt sheet
Orange Craft Foam sheet
Wiggle Eyes
Crafting Feather
Card Stock

First I cut out 5 circles about the size of a 50 cent piece out of the light brown felt



Next I cut out 5 circles about the size of a dime from the dark brown felt

I glued the tips of craft feather to the back side of the light brown felt and placed a card stock circle on top of the feather to bind them between the felt and card stock. This gave it a good stock body. Next I glued the dark brown felt circle to the top of the light brown felt circle and added the wiggle eyes and triangle shaped craft foam. Once I had all the turkeys made I attached Velcro to the backs of each turkey and the other half to the tips of the fingers on the glove.


Watch the children enjoy hearing the finger play song over and over again.

Puppets in Preschool

Puppets In The Classroom

A Great Teaching Tool

Puppets can be used anyway, anywhere, and anytime, to spark young children’s imagination.

Puppets are a great way to capture children’s interest. Using puppets is a wonderful teaching technique that can lead children to learning. Puppets can be used to teach concepts, to expand language, listening skills, manners and to encourage creative thinking. They can be used for transition time, drawing children to circle, telling stories, and singing songs.



● Choose a puppet or make a puppet.


● Have a job for that puppet. Does it introduce basic skills include letter sounds, counting, simple spelling and creative reading. Or does it specialize in introducing manners.


● Give the puppets names based on the job they teach. Polite Pete, Allie Alliteration, Willy Weather, or Valerie Vocabulary


● Create voices for the puppets. Large puppets or male puppets could have a deep voice, while small puppets or girl puppets could have a soft voice. You could us higher pitch voices for small animal or child’s voices.


● Design an area or a way that you us your puppets. You can use a puppet theater or cut a hole in a bag or box have your puppet pock its head out of the bag. Place items to be introduced in the bag or box.


Provide repetition with the puppets. Children lean best through repetition. This is why I have one puppet for each job. The children know what to expect when they see that puppet.


● Have fun when teaching with the puppets. Let the children have fun with the puppets. Have an area in your classroom where children always have puppets to use. Let the children design their own puppets using boxes, paper tubes or paper bags.


● Remember that puppets are a great teaching tool.


● Let the kids use the puppets or design their own. Create paper bag puppets for each child so the class can put on their own puppet shows.