Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Stick Puppets

C is for Crafts: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Stick Puppets

Even though we have a house full of girls, it is not all glitter and rainbows around here all the time.  My preschooler is pretty excited about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles these days.  Last weekend, after she woke up from her afternoon nap, she joined me in my crafting area and demanded that we make some Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle crafts.  Here is what we came up with – two variations of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle stick puppets.

For the first set I found some small Styrofoam balls that I had left over from another project.  We painted them dark green using acrylic paint.  I had some Wilton lollipop sticks (also left over from a previous project) which I cut in half with my scissors.  We pushed the cut end up into the Styrofoam ball to make the perfect stick handle.  This may have been my daughter’s favorite part of the project!  I then cut a thin strip of construction paper in the four necessary colors to make their masks.  We ran a bead of glue along each mask and wrapped them around the painted ball.  I used a sewing pin pushed in to the back to keep the mask in place while the glue dried.  We then glued on some googly-eyes and added a mouth with a black paint pen.  Ava insisted that I draw an angry mouth on them because apparently “they fight all night, mama!”  Of course, they do!  How could I not know this? Maybe the better question is how does she know this?!?

While the first batch of puppets dried, we made a simpler version out of paper.  I did the cutting and then set Ava loose on the gluing part.  We started with simple circles of green cardstock.  I used one of my circular cookie cutters to trace the circles before I cut them out.  Awhile back I bought a 6 piece set of circular cutters from Wilton that I love.  One side is smooth and the other side is scalloped.  I always have the right sized circle template when I need one. (I swear I have no affiliation with Wilton other than I have found many of their products to be super helpful with my crafts and projects!)  I again cut strips of paper in the four colors needed for the masks.  We picked out some smaller craft eyes this time.  Ava used a glue stick to glue the masks and eyes on the green circles.  She was able to do this part mostly by herself.  She even drew their “angry” mouths on by herself using a black marker.  We used the Wilton lollipop sticks again and taped half of a stick to the back of each one. Easy and cute.  Ava was so proud of herself!

I find it funny that I can remember the name of every tiny Shopkin she collects and I know all about the My Little Ponies and their cutie marks, but I cannot remember the names of these four silly turtles to save my life!  Ava practically rolled her eyes when I asked about 10 times what each of them are named. So not only am I giving you a fun and easy craft idea here, but I am going to give you a cheat sheet of these turtle names!  Here we go:  Donatello (purple mask), Leonardo (blue mask), Michelangelo (orange mask) and Raphael (red mask).  Not too bad for a girl mom, huh?  I hope you and your little ones have fun with this simple craft project. We sure did!

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