Most children really enjoy various animals, and you can really entertain them with animal puppets. This is a great way to create characters that teach valuable lessons to children but that they can easily identify with. It is also very easy to construct animal puppets out of old socks or sheets that children can design to create their own puppet show. These are animal hand puppets. You can also create animal finger puppets.
Finger puppets were designed after the popularity of hand puppets was continuing to rise. With finger puppets there was not stage needed and many puppeteers found this gave them the chance to interact with the children directly instead of just behind the scenes. It was also very simple to create various finger puppets. Yet controlling your fingers to make them appear to dance and interact with one another is something that is much harder than you might think. Some of the best finger puppet masters are able to have a finger puppet on all ten digits yet all of them are doing something different at the same time.
A hand puppet is one that you can control using only your hands. There are no strings to move it. You simply place your hand inside of the puppet from the bottom. This allows you to give your puppet the appearance of being realistic as your fingers move their arms, mouth, and head. The earliest type of hand puppet was the sock puppet. This was nothing more than a plain sock placed over the arm and a face painted on to the toe area of the sock.
Puppeteers are wonderful entertainers who delight us by magically adding character and personality to the puppets they manipulate. They are able to transform any type of puppet into a character that appears to be very real. In most cases the puppeteer is behind the scenes so they don’t get the recognition as other performers do for their work.
Most of us have been entertained by a puppet show. I can remember the puppets on Mr. Rogers when I was a child. The animation of the puppets made them seem like they were real. Children of all ages enjoy attending puppet shows as well as making their own puppets to put on a performance for others. Puppetry became very well known in the area of children’s programming with Sesame Street and The Muppets. Older children and adults have enjoyed seeing puppetry with the character of Yoda in the Star Wars series.