DIY shadow puppet theatre

I saw a great idea on the Seedling Facebook page a couple of weeks ago- making a shadow puppet theatre. They were running some workshops for the school holidays and the pic showed a scene from the Gruffalo. (Here's the pic on their page. )  I thought it would be fun to make our own one so I had a go- the girls loved it and played with it for ages..always a good thing!  

Here's how I made my one...

You will need
printer/photocopier
white A4 paper
black card
scissors
wooden skewers or lollipop sticks (I bought mine from a cake supplies store a while ago with grand plans of making lollipop cookies which hasn't eventuated yet!)
cereal box
sellotape
glue stick
cake board (optional)

1. Print out these Gruffalo colouring sheets and reduce them to about 25% of their original size. Cut around each picture like above and stick onto some black card.

 2. Cut out each picture and stick onto a wooden skewer or lollipop stick

3. Take apart a cereal box so it lies flat. On the two largest rectangles of the box measure about 1.5 cms in from each side (see below) and cut out (see below 2nd pic)

4. Tape the box back together so the outside of the cereal box becomes the inside.

 

5. Now trim a piece of A4 white paper to fit inside the box. Cut a piece of black card the same size.

 

6. Cut out two trees from the black card (nice and easy because the black card is the same height as the white paper) and stick onto the white paper

 

7. Stick the white paper to the inside of the box like below

8. Cut a slit out of the bottom of the box closest to the white paper for your puppets to go.

 

9. I sellotaped the theatre to the edge of a cake board so it was easy to keep the theatre stable- make sure the slit is just over the edge of the board if you do this (see above)

10. Set up a lamp behind the theatre on a stool so it is roughly the same height as the theatre. Warn children to be careful of hot light bulbs (learnt that lesson!)

11. Have fun acting out your story!

 And here are some more pics from the Seedling workshop for more great story ideas as well as ideas for decorating your puppet theatre-  thanks for the idea Seedling and Tweet Design!

Megan x