Alice the Camel Puppets

Sorry I haven't posted in awhile. I've been busy getting ready for my last day, which was today. It was hard to say goodbye to the kids and my co-teacher! But now I'm back with a bunch of art projects for my Desert theme and I will share them with you over the next couple of days.

First we learned all about camels. Then we made camel puppets! This puppet craft took me a whole week to figure out. I knew what I wanted to do, it just took a few trial-and-errors to get it right. First I drew a camel without the humps. I separated it into two parts: the head and front legs, and the tail and back legs. For the middle, I folded a brown rectangle accordion-style.

The X's are where the kids attached the rectangle with glue. Then they could decorate humps any way they wanted. They glued 2 of the humps on, one toward the front and one toward the back. The third hump was for the middle, but it needed to be detachable. So I used some yarn and taped it on. Then I added a tiny bit of poster putty.

I also attached jumbo craft sticks to the legs for handles.
Now here is our Alice the Camel story:

Alice the camel has 3 humps.

Alice the camel has 3 humps.

Alice the camel has 3 humps.

Go, Alice, go.

Alice the camel has 2 humps...

Alice the camel has 1 hump...

Alice the camel has no humps...

'Cause Alice is a horse, of course!

Doesn't my helper have on a beautiful dress? Oh, I miss her already!

Anyway, this is what the back looks like when Alice only has two humps:

You use the poster putty to stick it to the back and it's out of sight. To go from two humps to one, you just move the craft sticks closer together and the middle rectangle folds up. And, well, you have to bend down the humps to go from one to none. Anyone have a better idea? I think if I do this again, I will make the camel on white paper and the kids can color that as well, instead of just the humps.

Another quick camel art project we did involved sand. I put out two pictures of camels, one with one hump and one with two humps. After the kids colored them, they painted a mixture of glue and water on the bottom of the paper. Then they sprinkled sand onto it.

Fun Fact: A camel's hump stores FAT, not water!