Twas the Night Before Christmas Shoe Box Puppet Theatre
It’s not long until Christmas now and one of my favourite Christmas traditions is to read the story ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas’ to my boys on Christmas Eve, before the kids head up to bed.
Instead of just reading the story this year, why don’t you try creating a special craft from the story? I have come up with this easy puppet theatre craft made from an old shoe box and items you’ll have around the house.
The great thing about it is that you can make it as easy or complicated as you want, with a huge amount of variations depending on what you are looking to do with it.
Materials Needed to Create your own Christmas Shoe Box Puppet Theatre
Shoe box
Scissors
Several sheets of thin card
Pens/pencils/crayons
Lollipop sticks
Glue
Wrapping paper (optional)
Sellotape (optional)
Blue tak
How to Create your Christmas Show Box Theatre
- Cut a rectangle with a 2cm border out of the bottom of the box (see photo), this will be the window to see the puppet show.
- Cut one long side off the lid of the box.
- Draw a background onto a sheet of card and glue onto the inside of the lid. I chose to draw a living area of a house complete with Christmas tree and fireplace, but you could also draw the outside of a house covered in snow. Or even two backgrounds, with one glued to the lid and the other held in place above the main image with a couple of paperclips, when needed.
- Next you need to cut 2 slits into the top of the bottom of the box, this is where the puppets will be inserted through. Ours were approximately a 2cm gap between the two slits and the slits themselves were approximately 3mm wide.
- On another piece of card draw characters from the story. We chose to have a tiny St Nick and reindeer flying through the sky, a jolly old St Nick for in the house and a child asleep in bed. You could also have the mother and father, reindeer in the snow (prancing and pawing of each little hoof) or whatever else you would like from the story.
- Cut around each picture and attach to a lollipop stick using either glue or sellotape. Our box was quite wide so for the Santa and bed we taped two lollipop sticks together lengthwise to make the pictures reach the base of the theatre.
- Enjoy playing and reciting words from the story with your children!
To embellish your box further you can wrap the box in wrapping paper to look a bit more finished, use glitter for parts of the background and puppets and slot in a second background when needed.
Out Now! – Countdown to Christmas Ebook
When life gets hectic in the lead up to Christmas wouldn’t it be great to be able to spend a little time with the family creating gifts for others, food to enjoy together and traditions that make magical Christmas Memories?
But what actually happens is you spend hours searching through Pinterest looking for ideas and realise halfway through saying you are going to start that you have only 1 thing on the materials list!
I’ve been there!
So that is why we’ve put together our 24 favourite Christmas Activities, Crafts and Recipes with full materials lists and step-by-step instructions so that you have everything at your fingertips.
Produced as a PDF you can download, print and use these ideas throughout the festive season with your children and families.
Find out more as we share with your our Favourite Ways to Countdown to Christmas.
Jenny blogs over at Monkey and Mouse and is a mum to two delightfully energetic little boys who love to craft, explore the outdoors and cause chaos!
You can find her on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.
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