Make a Caterpillar Puppet

Materials you'll need

• Pipe cleaners (1 red, 1 green — or any two colors)
• Wooden skewer or craft stick
• Wiggle eyes
• Craft glue
• Green paper + scissors + marker (to cut and draw your leaf)
• Straw

 

Step-by-step tutorial

Step 1: Hold both pipe cleaners together at one end and wrap them tightly around the wooden skewer in a spiral, working your way down the length of the stick. The two colors will twist together as you go, creating a striped caterpillar body.

Step 2: Slide the coiled pipe cleaners off the skewer and set aside. Roll another pipe cleaner into a small, tight circle. This is your caterpillar's head.

Step 3: Glue the head circle to the top end of the body coil. Then glue 2 wiggle eyes onto the front of the head.

Step 4: Cut a piece of green paper into a leaf shape and draw veins. Then glue a straw along the center of your paper leaf, running it lengthwise like a stem. Let it dry completely.

Step 5: Push the wooden skewer through the straw so it slides in and out freely. Glue the caterpillar's body along the top of the straw, with the head facing toward one end of the skewer.

Step 6: Push the skewer forward and pull it back. 

Learn more

The secret to this puppet is directional friction. The pipe cleaner coils are angled, so when you push the skewer forward, the coils grip the straw and the caterpillar slides with it. When you pull the skewer back, the coils slip the other way, leaving the caterpillar in place. Earthworms use a very similar trick: tiny angled bristles on their skin, called setae, grip the ground in one direction and let go in the other, helping them inch forward without sliding backward.