Here’s another printable craft for your little learners, a bat finger puppet.
This simple paper craft is great for developing your child’s cutting and sticking skills, and an awesome chance to practice some pencil control and fine motor skills as well!
Like most of the crafts here at Nurtured Neurons, there’s a pre-colored template for quick puppet making, or a plain one if your want to get a bit more creative!
And a super thing about these types of crafts is not only are they get fun to make and your children can practice lots of skills when doing so, but then you have a toy they can play with at the end – and play is just such a great way for children to learn!
Win win!
This simple craft could also be an awesome activity for Halloween!
What Skills Can Your Children Learn And Practice?
When making this cute bat puppet, your children will have the chance to practice and develop some skills such as:
- Cutting Skills – if you feel they’re ready, you can let them have a go at cutting out the pieces all by themselves – they’ll need to be careful and have good scissor control if they want to cut out the pieces neatly
- Fine Motor Skills – when they’re sticking and picking up and moving the parts and placing them where they need to go
- Pencil Control – if you print off the black and white version they can practice their pencil control and develop hand strength through coloring.
This simple craft will also give them a chance to practice their concentration and perseverance skills as they may find it tricky to put the puppets together at first.
And when they’re done, they’ll also be able to use their imagination, story telling and social / communication skills when going on playful adventures with friends and family!
How To Prepare This Bat Finger Puppet
First you’re going to want to download the finger puppet templates by clicking on the download button at the bottom of the page – I’ve made a color and a black and white version.
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Other Materials You’ll Need:
- Safety scissors
- Card stock or craft paper
- Some good glue
- Some coloring pencils or pens / other artsy materials for decorating
Once you’ve downloaded the templates, you’ll need to print them off onto paper or card.
Then, you can cut them out. Or if you’d like your children to get some cutting practice, you can let them have a go.
Then stick all the pieces together to make your bat.
The order I’d do it in is:
- Decorate the puppet if using the black and white templates
- Stick the parts of the wings together
- Stick the parts of the body together – when doing this, you only need a little glue ran around the inside of the side and top edges, leaving the bottom edge open for those little fingers
- Stick the wings on the back of the body
- Once the glue has dried, your puppet may be looking a little flat, so you may need to use a pencil or your scissors (grownups should probably do this part) to gently open the bottom part where the fingers will go.
The finished one should look something like this:
After that you’re all done!
Now it’s time to get playing – if you want your bat to have some buddies to go on adventures with, you can check out other printable puppet templates here.
I’d love to see how they got on!
