Finger Puppet Mouse Craft

Here’s a cute finger puppet mouse craft that little ones will love! It’s great if you’re doing a pets theme, or as a Chinese Year of the Rat activity. It also ties in well with the books “Highway Rat”, “The Gruffalo” and “Town Mouse and Country Mouse.”

It’s very easy to make, and you only really need an egg carton and some scraps of card. You don’t even need to paint the egg carton if you don’t want to – just use ones that come in mousey colours like brown and yellowy beige. If you do want to paint it, bear in mind the cartons are very absorbent and take some time to air dry, but you can really speed things up with a hairdryer.

Check out my tips at the end of the post if you’re doing this craft with a group of pre-schoolers!

How to make the Egg Carton Mouse Craft:

1. Using a craft knife, cut out one of the peaks from an egg carton. Paint it in the colour of your choice and allow to dry. Speed up drying time using a hairdryer.

If you’d rather avoid painting, kids could colour the carton pieces with felt pens. It won’t give as good coverage as paint, but it’s instant and gives an interesting textured effect like fur!

3. Cut two circles from coloured card and cut two smaller circles out of pink card. You can use something like a bottle top to trace the larger circles, or a circular shaped craft punch. Stick the smaller pink circles onto the larger ones to make the ears.  Stick an ear to each side of the head.

4. Add some eyes.

5. Your finger puppet mouse craft is finished! You can stick on a pompom nose or paint one on, but they still look cute even without one!

Advice for small group classes:

This is a simple craft that takes about 10-15 mins to complete if you don’t paint it, depending on age. If you paint it, you will need to add on 15 minutes more for painting time, plus drying time.

Some tips:

• Pre-cut the egg carton pieces before class. Young children won’t be able to cut the pieces out themselves.
• Show children how to paint the egg carton pieces without getting their fingers too messy: they can thread it onto a pencil and paint it, or put two or three fingers inside and move their hand around to paint all the sides.
• Three to four year olds will have trouble cutting out the ears, as the circles are a bit too small for them. A circle-shaped craft punch will save you a lot of time!
• Allow for drying time if you plan to paint the mice. They will dry quickly with a hairdryer, as long as the paint isn’t too thick. You can thread several onto a wooden kebab stick, but make sure they don’t stack on top of one another:

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