Activity Overview
Puppets are wonderful for creating a fascinating world of pretend play. We love to make and play with puppets at our house and we loved making these unique Tennis Ball puppets immensely. Children of all ages will enjoy imaginatively designing these Tennis Ball Chomping Handheld puppets. A cool feature of these puppets is that they can open and close their mouths and emulate chomping and swallowing. After crafting, you can turn this craft project into a game as well. Use small items like beads, beans, buttons or marbles to play a twist on Hungry Hungry Hippos with Hungry Hungry Tennis Ball Puppets. This puppet and activity are great for developing hand strength.
Materials Needed
- Old tennis balls
- Sharp knife
- Paint and paintbrushes
- Pipe cleaner
- Felt
- Wiggly eyes
- Masking tape
- pom-pom
- Black marker
- Scissors
- Tacky Glue
- Newspaper for your craft space
- egg carton (for drying the tennis ball on)
How to Make It
- Have an adult use a sharp knife to cut a slit across the lower half of the ball for the mouth. The deeper the mouth cut, the easier it will be to squeeze the mouth to open it.
- Paint the ball any color that you would like. Let it dry on the plastic-foam egg carton.
- Stick a piece of masking tape on the back of each wiggle eye to create a better gluing surface. Glue the eyes on the ball above the mouth.
- Glue a pom-pom, button or another crafty object for the nose.
- Use the black marker to make a line over the cut mouth to accentuate it.
- To make the mouth of the apple open and close, squeeze the ball on each side of the mouth.
