Bee Puppet
Craft a cute and friendly bee puppet this spring! When you’re done, go ahead and try this paper bag dragon puppet too! This post contains affiliate links.
What is it about bees that makes them so utterly CUTE? Those black and yellow stripes that warn of danger in real life are just impossibly compelling on a craft or kid’s toy. If your little one is ready to learn about our favorite little pollinators, make this simple and adorable paper bag puppet to act out their important work. Or if your child is already nervous about bugs and stings, use this friendly puppet to help them feel more at ease and act out calm responses.
Actually, you don’t even need any educational excuse. This craft is simple enough for anytime with the template available for free at the end of this post. While it looks easy, it provides a good workout for kids’ fine motor skills and visual coordination.
The directions below are for the basic paper bag puppet, but feel free to add on extras such as wiggly eyes or mini pom-pom antennas if you have them available. You can also choose to use white paper instead of the suggested colors and have your crafters color it with crayons or markers if you prefer or if you don’t have the colored paper available.
What you’ll need
- Paper – any type of paper can work for this craft: construction paper, copy paper, or even cardstock if you like an extra sturdy finish. The colors you’ll need are black, yellow, pink, and white.
- Pencil
- Scissors
- Glue – regular white glue or tacky will work equally well for this craft
- Markers
How to Make a Bee Puppet from a Paper Bag
1. Download the template and print it out on letter size paper. Cut out all the pieces: head, body, antennas, cheeks, eyes, stripes, and stinger.
Use a pencil to trace the template shapes onto the appropriately colored papers (yellow for the body and head, pink for the cheeks, white for the wings, and black for antennas, stripes, and stinger.) You may want to do this ahead of time for younger crafters. After this, you can put aside or discard the template.
Cut out all the traced shapes from the colored paper.
2. Use a marker to add pupils to the eyes, as shown in the picture. Alternatively, you can use wiggly eyes at this point.
3. Assemble the head: Glue the antenna cutouts to the top side of the head cutout (I like to attach them to the back of the head, but you can go ahead and stick them on the front if it’s easier.) Glue the eye cutouts near the top of the head, below the antennas.
4. Glue the pink cheek cutouts near the bottom on each side.
5. Use markers to draw a smile on the face between the cheeks. On the wings, use the markers to draw an outline and accent lines if you’d like to.
6. Glue the black stripe cutouts to the yellow body cutout. Attach the stinger to the bottom of the body.
7. To form a puppet, the opening of the paper bag will be the bottom where you can put your hand in, and the base of the bag (what would normally be the bottom) will become the puppet’s head. Place the bag flat on the table in front of you with the opening closest to you, and the base of the bag on top.
Glue the body shape to the main part of the paper bag.
8. Glue the head to the base of the bag.
9. Glue one wing on each side (you can also do this by gluing the wings to the back of the body or bag, and having them stick out over the sides).
10. If you wish, trim the bottom of the bag so that you only see the bee’s body with no extra bag sticking out.
When the glue is dry, unfold the bag and put it over your hand to act out all kinds of buzzy bee play!
Download the bee puppet template
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