Far and away the most popular of my quiet book pages for my grand-daughters has been my superheroes page. It basically consists of a bag, containing 10 superhero puppets. That really has been the 'go to' page for all of the three older ones. And unlike some of the other pages, they ask for this one again and again.
To find out how I made this quiet book page, read on!
The idea came from having seen a couple of web sites for jumping jack puppets. The following that I found were generous with free print-outs.
- mgulin.com .This link is to the Batman puppet. By the way, Mguiln also has a set of DIY alphabet superhero puppet on ETSY for a modest sum, as well as many other jumping jack puppets and other children's craft projects.
- Superhero Crafts . This link is Thor, However, although not acknowledged, I think it also comes from Mgulin, a Swedish designer.
The puppets can be assembled to be Jumping Jack puppets, with strings to make the arms and legs move to star jumps. This requires strings to be attached through a second set of holes. MGUILIN gives detailed instructions on the downloads, but here's a picture of the back view showing the strings.
However, we decided the strings were not practical for our purposes. and that the puppets would work fine without. That is in part because I wanted to print them quite a bit smaller to fit into my quiet book, so the string holes would be very tiny. And with such tiny holes, the arms and legs would probably not return to 'normal' after pulling the strings, but would have to be returned to the start position by hand. I'm glad we made that choice, as the girls enjoyed pushing the puppets into different shapes themselves, so didn't need strings.
My printer doesn't take very thick card, and I worried that the holes to be punched would rip, with thinner card. So they were printed instead on thick paper...........
....... then each piece of each puppet was cut out, just outside the solid black lines, and the pieces sandwiched between the back and front of laminating sheet. I was able to get a couple of puppets on each sheet.
Once laminated, they were then cut out again, slightly beyond the black lines to leave some of the lamination around the edges. (My lovely husband did most of this cutting out! With 5 pieces for each of 10 puppets to be cut out twice, that was a lot of cutting out.)
We had a rotating punch plier with several holes from 2mm to 4.5mm, but you can buy something similar easily enough from Amazon. Alternatively you can just make the holes with a regular punch or a thick needle.
Then the arms and legs were attached using split pins (brass fasteners). We bent the ends over to be less spiky. Here's what it looks like from the back.
Here are all 10 of the puppets I made. Before I made them, I'd asked the girls who all their favourite superheroes were, to make sure I hadn't missed anyone. This was the combined list for all three girls.
I wanted to make a pocket on the page to hold all the puppets. I was delighted to find this fabric as a fat quarter which has many of the superheroes on it.
I cut it to shape, then I hemmed all the sides, having first made a pleat in the bottom. I threaded elastic through the top hem which was going to be the open side. (The idea was that elasticating it would hold it a bit tighter and hopefully keep the puppets from falling out.)
While we were on holiday, the current favourite was Batman. So they got to pick in turn. Next time, a different child got first pick. I was amazed at the imaginative games they played, telling stories and making adventures for the superheroes.
They enjoyed posing them. For example, here's Superman flying, one hand out in front and legs crossed; Spiderman climbing a building; Thor about to use his axe; and Wonderwoman leaping in the air.
The back of this page was another abacus, using the same animal beads I had made in the earlier orange one. The difference here is that I sorted the beads this time by colour rather than by animal, so I was able to muster 9 different colours. Each string has different animals, accordsing to what was left. As you can see, there was a little duplication of animals as the numbers increased.
First, the beads were all threaded on thin elastic cord, having first worked out the sequence.
(However, not quite carefully enough - I failed to take into account that as I would be snaking the cord up and then down, up and then down etc, I should actually have reversed the direction of the animals for alternate numbers in threading them. As it is, on the odd numbers, the animals are the right way up, but on the even numbers, they are upside down. Oh well!)
So, the elastic cord threaded with beads snaked up and down, and I tacked the U-shaped ends to the pink backing. Then I covered the ends with the green strips of felt and sewed over them.
The white numbers came from a purchased set of ready-cut numbers, which saved a bit of time.
The three-year old enjoyed playing with this. She liked sliding the animals up and down the cords and counting them.
For other quiet books ideas, see my other quiet books posts. A search will give you several links.
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