Do you have a child who is fascinated with things in the kitchen? How about the pot holders? We do. Random, I know. What can I say? One of our sons uses them anytime he is warming up stuff or toasting things in the kitchen. I’ve tried to show him he’s not in a real danger zone with his warming duties, but he loves the pot holders. Maybe it makes him feel like a real chef!? It’s one of those easy parent-child issues that doesn’t really matter, so we’ve embraced the pot holder fetish.
One day while watching him wait for his toast, inspiration struck! Those potholders would make cute puppets! I set out to try my idea. Here are some supplies I used, but you can use really anything you have on hand that would be a cool embellishment!
Supplies:
- Pot Holders (I got mine for $0.88 each at Walmart)
- Hot Glue Gun with glue sticks
- Scissors
- Felt
- Craft Feathers
- Yarn
- Googly Eyes
I started out by gathering a ton of supplies. Next, I had to consider what type of animal or creature to make! A monster or dinosaur were my first ideas because you could get super creative with colors and textures. With Thanksgiving coming up, I decided to make a turkey (knowing my first grader would have a blast with him).
I started by cutting out the turkey’s beak. After placing it where it should go, I decided it needed to be a bit bigger. It helped me to cut out several of my pieces from the felt and just place them where they would go, before hot gluing them in place. This checked scale and placement before I committed to it.
As you can see in the pictures below, I also folded and hot glued part of the potholder mitt. This helped me to shape my turkey head a little more to my liking while still keeping the majority of the glove/puppet functioning.
After I had my main design, I hot glued the felt pieces in place and started playing with more materials. I added googly eyes and feathers for more fun textures.
I loved it so much, I started snapping pictures to send to my husband immediately. I knew this turkey needed someone besides me to talk to, so I whipped up a horse to be his friend.
My favorite part of the horse is the eyelashes! They are the side of a feather.
This project was so easy. It literally was a little bit of cutting and hot gluing. My kids came home from school and were so excited to play with them and now want to make their own. We will add pot holders to our shopping list.
The components to keep in mind as you create are:
- Help your child to hot glue, if they are uncomfortable with a glue gun.
- Watch what side you of the puppet you are creating your little guy. I only created one side of each of my pot holders. I created on opposite sides so that the puppets could face each other to communicate. You could, of course, design both sides of your puppet. You could let your imagination fly and even make an angry/surprised version of your puppet face on the back to use in your puppet shows!
What do you think!? Do you need to create some pot holder puppets as well!? I don’t think these will be used with our toaster oven, but they sure make a fun toy! Let your imagination go wild! What creature would you make??
If you use this idea, please tag us on social media so we can see your fun creation! Use #spoonfulofimagination to find us on Facebook and Instagram.
Leave a Reply