Playful puppetry

Difficulty rating: **
Time to prepare: **
Cleaning up: ***
Activity time: 40 to 60 minutes

This activity will develop your child’s creativity as it uses his imagination in a big way to decide on different characters for the spoons. While he paints the spoons he also exercises his fi ne motor skills and hand-eye coordination.

You will need:

Wooden spoons

Paint

Glitter, tape, felt or fabric as decorations

Directions:

Select a couple of your old, used wooden spoons or buy a couple of affordable ones for this exercise. Help your child to transform the wooden spoons into characters by painting a little face as well as hair and clothes on each spoon. Let your toddler decide on the gist of the characters – colour, placement of features, etc. Now give each of the characters a name and history. Let your child play with the characters and create his own stories for them.

TIP:

Let your toddler paint in old clothes in an environment that can handle the odd spill. Buy paints that are washable.