Make a Hummingbird Puppet

Materials you'll need

• Sheet of blue paper (for the body)
• Yellow paper (for the belly)
• Green paper (for the wings and tail)
• Straws in different colors
• Scissors
• Tape or glue

 

Step-by-step tutorial

Step 1: Cut your blue paper into a hummingbird body shape — a pointed beak, rounded head, and a long, curved body that tapers at the back.

Step 2: Cut a smaller curved piece from the yellow paper and glue it onto the middle of the body as the belly. Cut the green paper into a tail and glue it to the back.

Step 3: Cut green paper into two long feather shapes, snipping small slits along one edge of each to look like feathers.

Step 4: Glue the feather shapes to the side of the bird as the wing.

Step 5: Snip a few small flaps into one end of your first straw, then tape that end to the underside (belly) of the bird's body. This straw will stay fixed to the body.

Step 6: Cut your second straw to length, then slide it over the first straw so it can move back and forth freely, like a sleeve.

Step 7: Tape the top of the second straw to the back of the wing feathers.

Step 8: Hold the bottom of the first straw steady and gently push or pull the second straw.

Learn more

This puppet's secret is two straws sliding against each other. The bird's body is anchored to the inner straw, while the wing is taped to the outer straw that slides over it — so when you push or pull, that motion tugs the wing back and forth relative to the body, bending it right at the spot where it's glued on. That's what creates the flap! Real hummingbirds flap very differently — their muscles rotate their wings in a figure-eight pattern nearly 50 times a second — but this puppet borrows the same basic idea: one moving part pushing and pulling against a fixed part to create motion.