Make a paper plate duck craft with your kids and watch them put on a puppet show. This is a fun and easy kids’ activity for preschool and up.
Hello, I’m Keri. Over at my blog Backyard Summer Camp, you’ll find simple kids’ crafts to help you plan some fun and easy activities at home with your family. If you need an easy weekend craft idea, bust out the paint and white paper plates to make this paper plate duck craft! Then turn it into a puppet show and let your kids get creative with storytelling.
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I love finding kids’ activities to do year-round when we’re at home on holidays or weekends. Right now one of my kids is obsessed with ducks, so I came up with this adorable paper plate duck craft puppet show!
There’s something about kids and ducks. Mine have always loved to go to the park and watch the ducks swimming around in the small pond. We see all kinds and have even learned the names of several types. You can make this paper duck craft look like the classic yellow rubber ducky toy or a more realistic brown-and-green mallard or white muscovy.
If you do this as a preschool activity, you’ll probably need to help your child with each step. Older kids can practice cutting and painting with supervision.
How To Make a Paper Plate Duck Craft
You can use this paper plate craft to make all kinds of puppet shows. Just paint the background and foreground for each scene and create more characters!
What You Need:
Here’s what you’ll need from the store. The exact amounts are in the printable craft card at the bottom of this post.
Craft Tools Needed:
Supplies Needed:
- White paper plates
- Craft paint
- Craft sticks
- Black Sharpie
- Newspaper or a drop cloth to protect your table
Paper Plate Duck Pond Craft Tips
- Use thick, deep paper plates so there’s plenty of space inside for the puppets and kids’ hands.
- Avoid plastic plates. Wax-coated plates are fine, but paint often does’t stick to plastic.
- Making cutting the center easy by pinching the plate in the middle before snipping with scissors.
- Flatten curled paper before the paint dries completely so that the finished characters lay flat.
Duck Craft Activities
You can do this craft as a stand-alone activity or pair it with more activities for fun and learning!
D is for duck craft.
Download our Printable Letters of the Alphabet to Trace and print the letter D so your child can practice writing.
Count the ducks activity.
Download our Printable Number Tracing Worksheets 0-20 and use them to practice counting how many ducks there are in the pond.
Visit the park.
Make this paper plate duck craft before or after visiting the park to watch the ducks swimming in the pond.
Learn about local ducks.
Do a bit of research to find out what type of ducks are common where you live. Paint your paper plate ducks to look like them!
Read a story.
Find an age-appropriate book about ducks, farms, or nature to read with your kids.
Sing a song.
Make a whole family of paper plate ducks and act out the song while you sing the “Six Little Ducks” nursery rhyme.
Paper Plate Duck Craft Puppet Show
Equipment
- Glue
- Scissors
Ingredients
- 2-3 Paper plates white
- 6 bottles Craft paint red, yellow, green, blue, white, brown
- 3 Craft sticks
- 1 Newspaper or a drop cloth to protect your table
- 1 Sharpie black
Instructions
- Cut out the puppet theater.To make the puppet theater, cut out half of 2 paper plates, leaving a thick border. Draw a line in the center of each one and pinch the plate to start cutting.
- Draw and cut out the ducks.Using the scrap cutouts from the plates or a fresh one, draw a simple duck. Start with a sideways teardrop for the body, then add a circle head. Connect the body and head with lines for a neck, then add a beak. Cut out each duck and erase visible pencil lines.
- Paint the puppet theater.Use a paintbrush to paint the inside of one of the paper plates to look like the sky. We mixed blue and white paint to get a lighter blue. Paint the outside of the other paper plate to resemble water.
- Paint the ducks.Use a small paintbrush to paint each duck the color of your choice. Set aside to dry.
- Add painted details.When the puppet theater is dry, add some green paint around the water for grass. Add more details to ducks if you’d like. Draw eyes and wings with a black Sharpie marker.
- Assemble the puppet show.When all the painted pieces have completely dried, use the glue to attach each duck to the top of a craft stick. Put the plates together so that the sky is at the top inside and the water is at the bottom outside, and glue them together around the border. When the glue is dry, you’re ready to play!
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What’s Next?
If you liked this paper plate duck craft, then be sure to check out Backyard Summer Camp for even more easy kids’ crafts.
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