This DIY felt finger puppets set of the Five Little Monkeys is one of our favorites! If you have toddlers or young kids, you will love them too! These DIY felt finger puppets are great for developing language skills while doing finger play to go along with the Five Little Monkeys rhymes and songs. They will be an all time favorite in your home or classroom for imaginative play and fun quiet activities.
This adorable felt finger puppet set is an easy craft to make – you don’t have to be crafty at all to do this DIY craft project! In fact, your older kids might even be able to make these finger puppets on their own, or with a little supervision. Great practice for the fine motor skills! These easy finger puppets can be made from basic craft supplies that you probably already have at your house, and if you don’t, the materials are very inexpensive, so these felt finger puppets are super economical to make. In this post I will give you the free patterns for the Five Little Monkeys Finger Puppets as well as a step-by-step tutorial and detailed instructions on how to make finger puppets of your own!
Materials List for DIY Felt Finger Puppets
These simple finger puppets only require a handful of materials that you probably already have at home!
- Free Five Little Monkeys Felt Finger Puppets Pattern (below)
- Felt – you don’t need a lot – most of the pieces can be cut from scraps. I used brown for the monkey finger puppets, tan for their muzzles and inner ears, green for Mr. Crocodile (or is it Mr. Alligator?) and white for Mr. Crocodile’s teeth and eyeball.
- Wooden Clothespin – for Mr. Crocodile
- Hot Glue Gun and Hot Glue
- Sewing Machine (optional) – you can also use a needle and thread or embroidery floss, or even just hot glue if you prefer not to sew at all. You could also use fabric glue if you would prefer, but it tends to not work very well on felt.
- Fabric Paint (like Puffy Paint or Scribbles) – this is for the eyes and nostrils, but you can use thread or googly eyes if you prefer
- Embroidery Thread (optional) – this will be for the eyes if you want to stitch them on. You can also use the embroidery thread to stitch the body pieces together.
- Googly Eyes (optional, for the eyes – you can use fabric paint or embroidery thread if you prefer)
How to Make Your DIY Felt Finger Puppets
- First, print and cut out the free finger puppet templates at the bottom of the post
- Next, cut the pattern pieces out of felt. You will have ten monkey body pieces (or twelve if you decide to make a Mama monkey – I didn’t, but I think I will so that we can have the finger puppets we need to do the Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed finger play. I guess I need to make a doctor monkey too!) You will have ten ear pieces and ten inner ear pieces (12 if you want a Mama monkey), and 5 muzzles (6 if you are making Mama monkey). You will also have one crocodile head, two sets of teeth, and one eyeball. All the body parts are pictured below:
- Now we will assemble all of the ears. Place the inner ear felt pieces on top of each ear, lining up the flat edges of the top and bottom piece. You can join the two pieces by hand-stitching – a backstitch or whip stitch would work well. Or you can hot glue them together. I chose to hot glue the inner ear on to the outer ear because it is fast and easy. Set the ears aside.
- Now that you have your ears prepared it’s time to join the body front and back. The ears will be sandwiched between the two sides of the body. You can hold them in place with a couple of stitches or a little hot glue if you would like. Now stitch around the outside of the monkey bodies at about an eighth of an inch, leaving the bottom of the puppet open for the finger. You can machine stitch the monkey puppets (this is what I did) or you can stitch around edges of the felt with a blanket stitch or whip stitches. If you prefer to avoid sewing, you can glue the edges of the front and back pieces together with hot glue.
- The next step is to add the muzzles to the front of the monkey bodies. You can hand-stitch them on with a back stitch or whip stitch, or hot glue them on. I opted to hot glue mine on, which worked great. The muzzles should be placed at about the center of the front body piece.
- Now it’s time for the finishing touches! You can add eyes to the monkey puppets with embroidery stitches such as a French knot, or paint the eyes on with fabric paint (like Puffy Paint or Scribbles), or you can glue on googly eyes – whichever you prefer!
- And finally, add nostrils and a little mouth to the muzzle. Your embroidery stitches will come in handy here, or you can use fabric paint again here (this is what I did).
The monkey finger puppets are done! Good job!
Now for Mr. Crocodile!
- Glue (or sew) his eyeball onto the top of his head, as shown in the photo below.
- Now add his teeth by gluing them on to the back so that just the points of the teeth show on the front side.
- And now for the best part! Carefully glue the crocodile head to the clothespin, making sure to attach each side of the jaw to each side of the clothespin so that the mouth of Mr. Crocodile will open when the clothespin is pinched. This makes it so Mr. Crocodile can actually snap at the monkeys when you do the finger play. Isn’t that so much fun?!
- And for the last step – add some black to the center of Mr. Crocodile’s eyeball with fabric paint or a French knot.
Free Finger Puppet Template
Now you are finished! I hope you enjoyed this free felt finger puppet pattern. Thank you for visiting! Please come back soon!
For more free DIY felt finger puppets patterns, click on the links below!
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