Sunday School > Crafts > 3 Paper Nativity Crafts > Puppet Stage
Make a small puppet stage for children to re-tell the Christmas story. This scene shows the angel appearing to the shepherds.
Change scenes for the different parts of the story. this scene shows the wise men following the star.
A cereal box is flimsy to begin with, and gets flimsier with 3 holes cut out of it. If your kids will be rough with it, use a heavy duty corrugated cardboard box instead. Glue the top shut, and cut out the 3 holes as shown in the photo.
Make paper or foam puppets and glue them to popsicle sticks so the puppeteers’ hands stay out of view.
Make a paper curtain to hang from the hole in the top. Make scene backdrops in the same way, and change them through the hole in the top of the box.
Cut 3 holes in a box--one on the front, toward the top, to form the stage, the second one on the back, toward the bottom, where the puppeteers can be work the puppets, and the third in the top of the box for a curtain and changing scenes.
It can be challenging to figure out where the holes are once they are covered up. One way to figure out where the holes are, is to use a tack to poke holes in each corner of the window. After you cut the first hole, you can look through that hole, and let light shine through to see where the other 2 holes are --I held the pieces that I cut out of each hole on the outside of the wrapped box, and, moved them around until they lined up with the hole. Then I marked the corners of the hole and cut the “X.”
Cover the box with paper--wrapping paper provides a wide variety of colors and patterns. Glue stick works great for this. Cover the sides first. Then cut a larger strip the width of the box to wrap around the front, top and back. Carefully fold and glue all the corners. Cut an “X” in each hole in the box, fold the loose paper to the inside of the box and glue in place.
Make a simple “curtain by gluing a dowel to the top of a piece of paper. I used 2 bamboo skewers, since one wasn’t long enough to reach from one side of the hole to the other. Cut the paper to fit the top hole so it easily slips in and out of the top hole.
If the paper is plain, circle stickers can be used to decorate the front of the box. I stuck the edge of each sticker to a ruler so I could get them evenly spaced. Then I lay the ruler on the box and eased the ruler off of the stickers.
Make scene backdrops in the same way as the curtain. Leave them all hanging from the top hole, and switch around as needed.
brown figures
white figures
