I love making simple popsicle stick puppets for my young children because it is a great way to encourage imaginative play while also teaching basic reading skills. I love following their interests to make popsicle puppets of their favorite characters or genres and watch as their imaginations take off into a world of wonderment.

Pretend play is more than just fun for kids, it actually helps their cognitive development on several levels. Studies show that pretend play during early development allows for the enhancement of the child’s capacity for cognitive flexibility and creativity. Taking on different roles during pretend play also allows children to represent problems and scenarios from a variety or perspectives and this precipitates empathy and self regulation. Studies also show that it positively influences  language usage including subjunctives, future tenses, and adjectives. I love it because it get kids talking and any kind of talking is good for oral language development.

Materials

• Jumbo Popsicle Sticks (Or you can just cut some strips of cardboard.)
• Glue Stick (I like to buy my glue sticks in bulk here.)
• Card Stock (You could also use regular computer paper.)
• Scissors (I like these.)
• Color Printer (Having a good economical printer is an absolute must! These ink cartridges, that go with the printer previously linked, are expensive, but they last a long time, like 1,200 color sheets.)
• *Optional: laminator, laminating sheets, and large cardboard boxes

Directions

1. Print out some small characters. Elliot really wanted germs this time around, and we found tons of great images on our google image search. He has also liked superheroes, spiders, monsters, and Star Wars characters. When I’ve made these for Ruby, she wanted all of the My Little Pony characters. To get the images, I first do a google image search, then I click on the image I want, right click and copy it, open a Word or Publisher document, right click and paste it in, and then resize it to fit my paper. Sometimes I add boxes with the characters’ names and other times I just write the name on the popsicle stick. This kids love sitting on my lap as we do this part together.
   

   Germ Printouts on Popsicle Sticks

   

   My Little Pony Sticks

   

   Superhero Sticks

2. *Optional: Laminate your sheets before cutting them out. Here’s the laminator and laminating sheets that I use.
3. Cut them out. Sometimes Ruby helps me with the cutting, but I usually just do this by myself.
4. Use the glue stick to affix the cutouts to the top of the popsicle stick. *If you’ve laminated your characters, you might want to put some masking tape over the back of the stick to make sure it really holds.
5. Give them names. Elliot LOVES coming up with funny names for his germs. He’ll make up names like “Mook” and “Funkoo” and it’s a great opportunity to teach him how to sound out and spell words. It then becomes a great reading activity as he reads his sticks. I like writing the names vertically on the stick. On the back of the stick, we write their nicknames.
   

   Elliot (4) Naming his Germs

6. *Optional: Make backgrounds. When I made Ruby’s My Little Pony sticks, I also did google image searches for the homes of each of the characters. I printed out one picture of the outside of their home and one picture of the inside and glued them onto a large unfolded cardboard box. Elliot wanted random backgrounds of haunted houses and cities. This is a great way for children to learn about setting (where a story takes place).
   

   Ruby’s My Little Pony Boards

   

   Elliot’s Background Boards

7. Imagination Games: Now the children can use their popsicle characters in some imagination games. I love to play with them too and use funny voices for the different characters. Sometimes I like to introduce a problem scenario like one character is evil and trying to capture the others or one is sad and the others want to cheer him up, but they are usually pretty creative and independent with this part.
   

   Ruby (5) Playing with her My Little Ponies

   

   Ophelia (2) Loves Playing with Them Too

8. Storage: I like to keep these out and accessible as the children are interested and want to use them, but if they lose interest after awhile, I tuck them away in a more disclosed location. That way, they’re excited when they “find” them again. 🙂