Adorable Puppets from Yogurt Containers

I love greek yogurt!  I've tried all the brands - and was intrigued by the Fage container that allows me to put only the amount of fruit/flavoring I wanted.  The yogurt was good, but when I finished and looked at the shape of the container, I saw a face - an animal face.  And then I got really excited!  I mean, who doesn't get really excited when their yogurt container looks like a face?!  That's the general concept behind the puppets that resulted.

Start with an empty, washed out yogurt container - the kind that has the fruit in its own separate reservoir to the side of the yogurt. (YUM!)

Turn the container upside down and you'll see the shape of a snout with a working mouth that opens and closes.

Paint the container.  I found the most effective paint to be a spray paint that specifically says it works on plastic.  We did a bunch of brown ones at once since it's a basic animal base color.  For the girls who wanted to do piggies, we used pink acrylic, then put a top-coat of clear spray paint so it wouldn't flake off.  I admit that this isn't holding up as well as the spray paint, which covers beautifully - no need to worry about the text on the container the paint covers right over it.  I'll have to do some more research and see if there are paints that fare better on plastics, since my kids LOVE to paint their puppets themselves with paint brushes.  Spray paint isn't quite as fun for them.

At some point in the process, using a narrow elastic, elastic chord  or elastic thread, punch small holes on each side, as shown, and tie elastic across the back.  This goes over the back of the hand and secures the puppet - keeping it from falling off the kid's hand when the puppet looks down.  This isn't absolutely necessary - the puppets work fine without this little touch - but it's helpful.

Let kids go crazy designing!  I originally envisioned bears when I saw the shape of the face, but the kids saw pigs, horses, a lion... and we're just getting started!!  I can't wait to see what we come up with next.

Use materials on hand to decorate puppets.  For the lion, I finger-knit a mane using furry yarn. Click HERE for more about finger knitting.

With his mane glued on, our lion just needed a triangle shaped piece of felt, a couple of felt circles just bigger than the googlie eyes, and some details drawn on with a sharpie.  Everything glued with hot glue. Kids placed, I glued.

For the horse, felt circles for nostrils, felt triangle for the white patch on its face, googlie eyes, and a finger-knit mane.

The adorable pigs have felt nostrils, googlie eyes, ears made of craft foam, and ribbon bows.  I love how the different eye placement gives each pig a completely different character!

 Finished puppets 

-- OH we're just getting started!!! (my daughter is bugging me as I type to make a dog.  That should be fun!  And my son wants more lions so he can put on a puppet show of Daniel in the Lion's Den.  Me, myself, I see three little pigs - three bears and Goldilocks...)

 And this is what it's all about - all afternoon we enjoyed stories and silliness from our new characters!

You'll never look at these yogurt containers at the grocery store the same :)