We love easy toddler crafts and this is a great cardboard tube craft idea.
This simple toilet tube panda puppet craft celebrates one of the world’s most recognizable bears - the panda!
Pandas are well known for their particular eating habits, goofy personalities, and representation of peace. This toilet tube craft idea is a fun one of celebrating these amazing creatures.
Toilet Tube Panda Puppet
If you have kids, you don’t seem to need to wait too long before an empty toilet roll tube presents itself. These are great resources for so many craft activities!
Pandas love bamboo. In fact, 99% of their diet is the leaves, roots, stems, and stalks of bamboo.
As a tribute to the panda, we created a toilet tube panda puppet complete with a bamboo stem. This can be a great conversation starter on different animals' diets.
As always, we love to match our crafts to a great toddler book and for this activity you can't go past the book 'That's Not My Panda' available HERE on Amazon.
What you need to make a toilet tube panda puppet:
- Toilet Tube
- Black Paint
- White Paint
- Green Paint Stick or Paint
- Popstick
- Green Paper
- Black Paper
- Glue
- Scissors
- Googly Eyes
Some drying time is needed to allow the white paint to dry before adding the black.
If the white paint is not dry, the colours will mix, creating a grey and white panda.
We used a hair dryer to speed up the process. Alternatively, you could wrap the white paper around the toilet tube instead of paint.
How to make a toilet tube panda puppet:
The first step to making the toilet tube puppet is to turn the brown cardboard tube white.
Using the white paint and paintbrush, paint the outside of the toilet tube white. Allow the paint to dry before moving to the next step.
Cut out two ears and two arms from the black paper.
Glue the ears to the inside of the toilet tube. Put the arms aside for later steps.
Once dry it is time to add the black markings to the panda. To paint the bear’s back legs, paint a band across the bottom of the toilet tube.
Leave a section in the middle in the front so it looks like the panda is sitting with his legs in front of him.
Then paint a black band across the middle of the toilet tube. This will be the black markings around the bear’s middle and part of his arms.
On the top third, paint two black eye spot markings and a little nose. The eye spots need to be a touch bigger than your googly eyes. If they are too small, the signature black panda markings will be covered by googly eyes.
The next element to make is the bamboo stick.
Using the green paint stick or paint, colour in the popsicle.
Cut out some leaves from the green paper and glue these to the pop stick.
Glue the bamboo on a diagonal to the middle of your panda.
Glue the arms in place over the bamboo so it appears the panda is holding the bamboo. These also provide extra stability supporting the bamboo pop stick.
Glue the googly eyes in the black markings on your panda’s face.
Your toilet tube panda puppet is ready to play!
This toilet tube panda puppet is a simple and effective toilet tube craft idea. It looks great and offers many prepositional language opportunities such as underneath, above, left, right, and inside. The result is a cute little character to join in on your toddler's play.
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SOME MORE FUN TODDLER ACTIVITY IDEAS YOU MIGHT ENJOY ARE:
Speckled Toilet Roll Frog Puppets
Easy Crafts for Toddlers
About the Author
Dani is a busy stay-at-home Mum of 3 and an early childhood teacher in training who is passionate about play-based learning throughout early childhood. For educational play ideas that you can do at home and parenting tips visit Play Inspired Mum Check her out on Instagram andFacebook