I love St. Patrick’s Day and my family really gets into celebrating the holiday. My son is currently obsessed with leprechauns so I thought it would be fun for him to make a leprechaun paper bag puppet. Since we had all of the supplies on hand, this project was quick and easy to make.
Supplies Needed:
- paper lunch bag
- green construction paper
- orange tissue paper
- googly eyes
- markers
- glue stick
- scissors
- buttons/pom-poms
How-To:
First put your bag on top of the green construction paper and measure the bag so that your green rectangle with cover the length of the bag from its opening to under the flap fold. Glue your rectangle onto the bag, leaving the flap free. The flap is going to be the face and needs to be able to move freely with a hand inside it to look like the leprechaun is talking.
Our orange tissue paper came in precut 1-inch squares. If yours is not already in small pieces, cut yours into squares. We used 8 squares to make our leprechaun’s beard. My son glued the tissue around the flap to make the beard.
Next, measure the width of the bag on your green paper and cut out a hat shape. My son drew a black line across his hat for the buckle adornment. Glue your hat to the top of the flap.
Now you get to make your leprechaun’s face. My son stuck on googly eyes and drew a smile with a red marker.
Our leprechaun was looking a little plain, so we added 3 yellow buttons to his “coat.” My son was happy with how his leprechaun paper bag puppet looked and didn’t want to add anything else to it. I had printed off some little shamrocks and thought it would be fun to add them to the puppet, but my son was already off and playing with his puppet!
The leprechaun puppet is making “mischief” around the house and very successfully avoiding all of my son’s leprechaun traps 🙂 What trouble will your leprechaun get into? Check out my St. Patrick’s Day book recommendations to read with your puppet. It might inspire you to make some leprechaun traps of your own!
