Hand Puppets
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.
Hand puppets offer lots of fun and entertainment for people of all ages. It is quite simple to make your own hand puppets. This is a perfect activity for at home on cold days, for a Sunday School class, or a classroom activity. You can make them in the design of people or animals. The majority of hand puppets are made from various types of cloth.
This is a great way to put on a puppet show that your entire group can enjoy. Many children are embarrassed to talk in front of others openly but they are more willing to participate through the hand puppets they have created. Many children therapists engage the use of hand puppets, especially sock puppets to interact with children. This is done in one of two ways.
The first method involves having the hand puppets talk to the child. This makes the situation with the therapist appear fun and less intimidating. The child will start to warm up to the hand puppets and then talk freely with them. If this doesn’t work then the second method is introduced. This involves letting the child play with the hand puppets and the therapist sits back and listens as the child takes directly to them through the hand puppets or has two or more hand puppets interact in a conversation with each other.
The first known hand puppets were introduced in the 17th Century and they were made from colored pieces of cloth. The main reason they were used was because they were easy to control, inexpensive to make, and you could make several of them in a very short amount of time. You also didn’t need to put a great deal of money into an elaborate stage for the puppets to perform.
