Animal Puppets! Cut. Create. Play.

2022: This is no longer a free item.  The puppet templates may be purchased as part of the Scissor Skills Printable Pack. 

This month in the Functional Skills for Kids Series, we are looking at cutting and scissor skills! You will find lots of great tips and tricks looking at scissor skills and cutting from the best therapy bloggers on the links at the end of this article.  

My focus is on incorporating play with scissor skills, so what better way to do this than to make puppets?!  Making a puppet gives your child's cutting some purpose.  It extends the activity so the "craft" can be played with ... encouraging further creativity with  imaginary story lines, character interactions, animal noises and speech. 

I have created these cute animal hand puppets with some ordinary brown paper bags and my FREE templates. Download these FREE templates to create a dragon, crocodile and shark from the YKOT shop.  
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These cutting templates include a range of skills including cutting along straight lines, zig zag lines, simple shapes and more complex shapes.  Cutting requires bilateral coordination with one hand holding the scissors and the "helper" hand holding and manipulating the paper as it is cut.  

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Dragon

1. Fold paper bag to form a mouth.
2. Print dragon’s fire and eyes onto red or orange paper. Cut along dotted lines. Roll fire onto a pencil. Paste end of each strip of fire into paper bag mouth (3 onto top section and 3 onto bottom section of the mouth). Paste eyes onto the top of the paper bag.
3. Print dragon’s spine/eyebrows onto red or orange paper. Cut along dotted lines. Fold triangles along solid black line. Paste rectangular section of one strip onto the top of the paper bag. (note: it is ok if this hangs behind paper bag).  Cut two lots of two triangle sections to form eyebrows. Paste above eyes on top of the paper bag. 

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Shark

1. Fold paper bag to form a mouth.
2. Print shark’s teeth onto white paper.  Cut along dotted lines. Fold triangles “teeth” along solid black line. Paste rectangular sections of teeth into “mouth” of the paper bag bending in the centre as necessary.
3. Print shark’s fins and eyes onto blue or grey paper. Cut along dotted lines. Paste eyes and back fin onto the top of the paper bag.  Place smaller fins on either side of the paper bag.

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Crocodile

1. Fold paper bag to form a mouth
2. Print crocodile teeth onto white paper.  Cut along dotted lines. Fold triangles “teeth” along solid black line. Paste rectangular sections of teeth into “mouth” of the paper bag bending in the centre as necessary.
3. Print crocodile face onto green paper. Cut along dotted lines. Paste crocodile head onto the top of the paper bag up to the point where the face starts to curve.  Fold eyes of crocodile forward.

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You could help to encourage further play with these puppets by cutting out  props such as trees, a castle, people or other animals. Mr almost 6 years and I made this scene above to give some characters for the dragon puppet to harass. Unfortunately one of the characters was captured by the dragon when they ventured out of the castle and needed to be rescued! 

Do your kids like cutting? Do they like puppets? 

This article is part of “Functional Skills for Kids: 12 month series by Paediatric Occupational and Physical Therapists”. You can find lots of great tips and tricks to help your children with scissor skills in the links below. Make sure you bookmark this page so you can come back to read all the links!
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Developmental Progression of Scissor Skills: 35 Best Tips for Teaching Kids to Use Scissors | Mama OT
Fine Motor Considerations for Learning to Use Scissors |  Miss Jaime,  O.T.
Gross Motor Skills and Scissor Use  | Your Therapy Source
Sensory Processing and Scissor Skills - a Surprising Link  | Kids Play Space
Teach Kids How to Slow Down to Cut on Lines |Sugar Aunts
5 Tips for Difficulties with Scissor Skills  | Growing Hands-On Kids
Creative Cutting Practice for Kids | The Inspired Treehouse
Visual Motor Skills and Cutting With Scissors  | Therapy Fun Zone
Animal Puppets! Cut. Create. Play.  | Your Kids OT

​Cindy is a registered Occupational Therapist practising in Sydney Australia.  She has two young children who are a constant source of inspiration and learning.  Cindy loves working creatively to help children to reach their potential, finding opportunities in everyday living and making learning fun. Cindy is the author of the Occupational Therapy blog Your Kids OT.