When my husband brought home some egg crate foam, I knew I wanted to use it for a project. After thinking about it for a while, I came up with these puppet boxes that use the egg crate as the base. We did an ocean puppet box, where the egg crate became the waves. We also made a meadow puppet box and the egg crate was the grass. And finally, a garden puppet box where we painted the egg crate foam brown, to make dirt. These were just a few ideas, but you could do many more!
For this project you’ll need the following supplies:
Egg crate foam
Empty cereal boxes
Brown paper or any recycled packing material
Masking tape
Acrylic paints
Paintbrushes
Bamboo skewers
Glue gun and glue
After you decide what type of puppet box you want to make, begin forming the puppets. To do this, shape your packing material and secure the form with masking tape. You can view another project where we used this technique here. Once your puppets are formed and completely covered in tape, you can begin painting. Set aside to dry and when done, insert a bamboo skewer in the bottom side of the puppet and secure with glue.
To make the puppet box, cut off the bottom of an empty cereal box. Cut a slit, lengthwise, in the middle of the box, being careful not to cut all the way to the edges. Next cut a piece of the egg crate foam, slightly bigger than the cereal box. Place it in the cereal box and trace the opening you cut in the previous step, onto the foam. Remove foam and cut on your mark. Next, paint foam and allow to dry. Once dry secure foam inside cereal box with glue, making sure not to glue the opening. Finally, insert puppets from the top, through the opening and control their movement from the bottom.
All that’s left to do is create a story and bring your puppets to life!