Home-Made Finger Puppets

My sister recently moved to Israel with her husband and their 21-month-old twin girls. I decided to make these finger puppets for them so that they could see our faces on a daily basis and continue to play with us, even when we are living so far apart from each other.

The design was simple. I printed photos of all our faces, cut them out, and laminated the images with mailing tape. I then cut out felt rectangles for the bodies and cut arms out of pipe cleaner. The bodies were hot-glued into a tube shape (I used a pencil to help me gauge the right size for toddler fingers) and I used the hearts to cover up the glue that was used to keep the arms in place. The faces were also hot-glued to the bodies.

The girls had a good time playing with the puppets. It was fun to see their reactions as they recognized the faces on each puppet. When I was arranging the puppets for a picture (the one featured at the top of this post), Nina started to copy what I was doing. She accidentally bumped some of the puppets over and gasped. “Are they sleeping?” I asked her. She raised her finger to her mouth and said, “Shhhhhh”.

Recently, when I was Skyping with my sister and her daughters. Nina walked away and then came back with the finger puppet that had my face! It was a great feeling to realize that she was really connecting these puppets with her aunts and uncles faces. Sometimes, my sister says, Nina will find my mom’s finger puppet. She holds it up and says “Nana, Nana”.