Making a Monkey Mitt
You can purchase ready-made monkey mitts and many, many ready-made pieces with the verses already printed up for you (see the bottom of the page). But, if you are a do-it-yourselfer and you like to be creative, this project is for you. This idea can also be used as a craft for teachers or for young children.
Material: Gloves, paper, markers, scissors, clear contact paper ( optional - felt pieces, pom pons, googly eyes, yarn) and Sticky-sided Velcro.
Gloves - Go to the Good Will and find discarded gloves. They don't need to match. If you need to buy gloves, wait until after winter when the cheap gloves go on sale or buy garden gloves.
Velcro - Sticky-sided Velcro comes in strips that you can cut and that is most economical. Cut them into about 3/4 inch squares. It's a bit tricky to peel off the backings when they are so small. If you are only making one monkey mitt, it might be better to buy sticky Velcro that are already cut into circles. But remember that you will use only five pieces of the same side of Velcro for the one monkey mitt. All the rest of the pieces will be the soft sides. So you need more of the soft Velcro every time you make a new set of puppets.
Word of Advice - Apply the scratchy side to all the fingers and the soft side to all the pieces (or visa versa) Otherwise, if they are mixed you run into the possibility of it not sticking.
Contact paper - The clear contact is still rather milky looking. If you have the resources, it would look better to take the pieces to a teachers' store or office store and have them laminated.
Optional items - The pieces you make can be made simply with paper and markers, but you can do some fancier things with the above mentioned items.
Monkey Mitt verses: Many of the finger plays can also be used for a monkey mitt. There are verses in books at the library and on the internet. Here are some sites:
http://www.geocities.com/mystorytime/frogs.htm
http://www.geocities.com/mystorytime/frogs.htm
