children's book Archives

Cinco de Mayo for Kids Craft

Cinco de Mayo for Kids Paper Bag Chicken Puppet

I thought it would be fun to make a paper bag version of the book’s main character. It could be used for retelling the story and for telling new tales based on the book. Paper bag puppets are super easy to make on your own or along with your children.

Rather than walk you step by step through how I made the puppet, I want to share the key steps. Along with the key steps I want to offer you some tips that will help you make one of your own.

Materials Needed

glue stick

scissors

brown paper bag

construction paper of various colors

Basic Construction Steps

Trace the outline of the bottom section of the paper bag onto white paper.

Trace the outline of the top area of the bag (from the top of the flap to the bottom of the flap) onto red construction paper.

Cut out the two outlines and glue them in place on the side of the paper bag with the flap.

Cut out two beaks out of orange paper. The second beak will go under the top one side the flap. That way a bottom beak can be seen when the chicken talks. The bottom beak should be smaller than the top beak.

Cut out the waddle out of red paper. Glue it in place before you glue in the bottom beak under flap.

Cut the various parts for the poncho, sombrero, wings, and eyes. You can try to make them look like the ones on the cover of the book if you like. Our chicken looks similar to the one of the book, but not just like him.

Then it is time to start gluing. We glued the parts of the sombrero and poncho together before gluing them to the chicken.

The wings were glued on before adding the poncho. The waddle was glued on top of the poncho.

The sombrero and eyes went on last.

This post contains affiliate links. I was sent the books mentioned in the post to review.

JDaniel and I recently spent time trying to decide the best way to get our zombie goldfish optical illusion spinning. The experiment featured the main character from the children picture book called My Big Fat Zombie Goldfishand the children’s novel The SeaQuel: My Big Fat Zombie Goldfish We were sent both books to review. I will tell you more about them later.) We both agreed that one of each of the two string needed to be held in each hand. Beyond that, we have very different opinions about how to spin the zombie goldfish. We also had different opinions about which way to work best at the beginning. Let me walk you through our spinning attempts and their results.

Getting the Optical Illusion Ready

Creating the Fish

I drew a zombie goldfish is Microsoft Paint. ( A very tame version of the goldfish. The fish in the books is much cooler and a little scary.) The goldfish was placed inside a circle. To make the optical illusion work one circled goldfish was created facing the left edge. Then the fish was flipped to create a second goldfish facing upside down and to right. (If you create your own optical illusion design you will want to do the same thing.

Getting the Fish Getting to Spin

The fish were facing on the outside of each circle. One fish was right side up and one was upside down. I was very careful about making sure their tails were lined up prior to gluing the circles together.

A hole punch was used to place a hole by the fish’s mouth and one by the fish’s tail. I really tried to make them right across from each other.
Then a string about 12 inches long was attached to each hole. The string was used as our spinning mechanism.

Two Spinning Techniques

I have read about twisting each of the strings as tightly as possible with my fingers. Then I was to let the strings go. We tried this and the fish did spin and create the optical illusion. While my technique worked, it was declared a slow way to create an optical illusion.

The faster way to get the fish to spin was to swing the two string and the zombie goldfish in big arcing circles. After a few swings, I was to pull the strings out as far as possible. (Don’t pull too hard I was warned or you will pull the string off the zombie goldfish.)

After trying both techniques were tried several times, I conceded that the arcing swings really did create the best optical illusion. We both had to admit that using this technique caused us to have to retie the strings a lot. We must not have tied the string enough times

Book Reviews

The Fintastic Fishsitter: A Big Fat Zombie Goldfish Adventure (My Big Fat Zombie Goldfish) is a picture book about babysitting a zombie goldfish. Sami is asked brother’s best friend’s zombie goldfish. She finds the hardest thing is keeping her brother’s vampire cat away from him. Finally, she decides to teach them why it will be better to get along. JDaniel and I both loved this book. It has a fun ending.

ANY FIN IS POSSIBLE: MY BIG FAT Z (My Big Fat Zombie Goldfish) was JDaniel’s favorite of the two books. It contains two separate stories. One about a mummy cat and one competing in a sports day. Both stories were a lot of fun! They would have to been if they featured a zombie goldfish. We both of humor found in stories. Some made parts made a smile and others made us laugh out loud.

This post is part of the storybook science series hosted by Inspiration Laboratories. Each day in the month of March a different children’s book will be tied to a science project. I hope you will check them all out.