Doorway Puppet Theatre

For Kids Can Do week I made a doorway puppet theatre.
 

Then my son and a good friend of his made some paper bag puppets for a puppet show. I got the print outs for the puppets from DLTK's Growing Together website. 

Here is a closer look at the puppet theatre. I used left over fabric from my Backyard Beach project. This would be super easy to create with a drop cloth or a sheet or a curtain, really anything that is already hemmed, just like this one from Kojo Designs. Since I was trying to use fabric that I already had, I added the red binding myself. I topped the theatre with a pleated awning. I also added a colorful bunting to the top of the window.


 

Here is a look at the backside of the theatre. I added a pocket to hold all of the puppets.
 

 

It is so fun to play with whether you are behind the curtain or just watching the show.
 

 

We love our new puppet theatre!
 

It also provides a fun new way to play with our Disney Pook-A-Looz Puppets.

Dr. Seuss Reading Corner

I recently added a little reading corner to my son’s room. As you may know, my son’s room is Dr. Seuss themed. So everything that I added has a hint of Dr. Seuss.

The room already had a couple of book shelves.

Underneath the shelves I added a magnet wall.

I just used Rustoleum magnet paint. This stuff is amazing! You can even paint over the magnet paint so that the magnet wall can just blend right in with the rest of the wall. I decided to leave it for the time being so that my son can see the contrast between where to put the magnets and where not to. I think eventually I’ll paint over it and then just frame the part of the wall that is magnetized.

Here is the wall before right we painted it.

I love the magnets on the wall. I happened to come across some Dr. Seuss foam stickers at Hobby Lobby one day. They came in a pack of 200. I thought that they would be perfect for this project. I just converted them to magnets by adding some adhesive magnet tape to the back of each sticker.

There are some cool magnets. All of the ABC’s, plus pictures of Dr. Seuss books and characters. They even have a magnet for every page of Green Eggs and Ham so you can even read the book right there on the magnet wall.

In addition to the magnet wall, I also sewed my son a bean bag chair using various Dr. Seuss fabrics. I used the Michael Miller child bean bag chair pattern.

It sits right next to his book shelf.

Contrary to the story this picture tells, my son actually loves his chair. He spends a lot of his day sitting and reading in his bean bag chair. He just wasn’t interested in sitting in it when I wanted to take a picture.

Here is a view of the entire reading corner, complete with a pennant banner made from Dr. Seuss book pages.

Here are a couple of links to other Dr. Seuss projects in his room.

Cat in the Hat Mobile

Dr. Seuss Storage Boxes

P.S. Happy Halloween! We spent our evening reading Halloween books in our Halloween PJ’s. We’ve had 3 rounds of trick or treating over the last week so we took the night off from candy collecting to pass out candy to others. It was just as fun but without the sugar high. My son would get so excited every time the door bell rang!

Adding Some Music to Lunch

Friday I was in the mood to create something, but nothing on my long list of things that needed to get done were calling out to me. I wanted to create something fun. Then I came across this…

…an adorable boom box lunch box from the gap. After seeing this, I knew exactly what I wanted to do.

I had a little lunch box/cooler that I had received back in my teaching days. One year for teacher appreciation week, the parents took us on a “cruise” around the world. Everyday for lunch we got a different themed cuisine. For Americas day, we got hot dogs and hamburgers and they came in these fun lunch boxes. We also received matching water bottles. Now I stay at home with my little guy and no longer work for this school, but I still have the lunch sack that they gave me. So I went ahead and transformed it into something that my son can use.

I just used some felt in a variety of blues, greys, black and white to create my own version of a boom box.

And since I had the matching water bottle, I figured why not do something with it as well. I created a headphones water bottle cozy. Take a turn around the water bottle cozy. I wrapped the headphone wire around the water bottle while giving it a 3D effect.

The cozy is held together with some black Velcro.

Not that my son is old enough to care what his lunch box looks like, or old enough to even know what a lunch box or a boom box is, but I plan on keeping this around for a while. For now we will take it with us to our picnics in the park. Hopefully someday he will think it is cool.

Disney’s Pook-a-Looz Puppets

I am Mickey Mouse. Every where I go I see someone I know.

 

 

 

Someone I know is trying to catch a fish. He has a skinny tail…

 

 

He is Pluto!

 

 

 

Whose tracks are these? They belong to someone I know. He is big and funny…

 

 

He is Goofy!

 

 

Look at my funny friend trying to stay cool. Can you guess who that is?

 

 

He is Donald Duck!

 

 

I am glad to have so many friends. Boy, am I glad that I am Mickey Mouse!

 

 

While I was at Disney World last month I snapped this photo…

 

 

I thought that these Disney Pook-a-Looz dolls were cute, but I had no desire to purchase any of them. I still snapped a photo in case I wanted to use these dolls as inspiration for a future project. Little did I know that this photo would come in handy sooner than excepted. See my son turned 1 about a week ago. I wanted to make him a gift. Since he loves Mickey Mouse, I thought that it would be the perfect time to do my own version of those stuffed dolls. I decided to make my son Disney hand puppets to go with his favorite book.

 

Let me introduce you to the characters…
 

Pluto Mickey

 

Goofy Donald

 

Front

Back

 

I’m so glad that I took the time to makes these, because my son absolutely loves them!