Felt Character Puppets

Learn-by-Playing felt character puppets (glove or finger puppets) are ideal teaching and communication aids for anyone working with young children or patients. There is nothing children love more than getting undivided attention, besides maybe – hearing stories, which is an ideal opportunity to forge a positive bond with young learners. Constructive communication gives young children a sense of security and helps form their identity and improves their self-confidence. The value of storytelling goes beyond the importation of information – it provides an effective method of transferring traditions of culture from one generation to the next. This means that not only is the nuclear family given better definition, extended family bonds are strengthened as well and the child’s identity within society is established. Storytelling also evokes a natural curiosity for learning; the recurring memory of that story builds a permanent source of instruction in the heart and mind of the child.

• Learn-by-Playing Glove Puppets: The body of the puppet is made from plain felt and adorned with an assortment of materials including lace, braid and cotton fabric. Details are hand-embroidered in acrylic embroidery floss, machine-appliqué, and machine-quilting. Each puppet is completely child safe! NO buttons or beads that can be broken off and swallowed! Each glove puppet has an ID name tag with its name, origin, some fun personal information. Puppets are made single-sided (front only) or double-sided (front and back). The user manipulates the head and arms of the puppet with their hand and fingers, allowing the puppet to interact with an audience and maintain the illusion of the characterization. Glove puppets are usually not much larger than the hand itself. Our glove puppet measures 245 mm x 205 mm (large enough to fit a child’s hand or small to medium size adult hand). Unit price: R130.00 (single-sided); R180 (double-sided) Click on puppet gallery to enlarge

Learn-by-Playing Finger Puppets: Finger puppets fit over a finger. The body of the finger puppet is made from plain felt. Details are hand-embroidered in acrylic embroidery floss. Each finger puppet is completely child safe! NO buttons or beads that can be broken off and swallowed! The user manipulates the character with their finger, allowing the finger puppet to interact with an audience. Our finger puppets measure 55 mm x 30 mm. Unit price: R25.00 (single-sided) Click on puppet gallery to enlarge

Learn-by-Playing Felties & Bobbles are tiny little dolls or ornaments made from craft felt. They are stitched with embroidery floss and thread, accented with patchwork and embroidery techniques. Our Felties and Bobbles are child-safe (no beads or ornaments). Examples include hair apparel (head bands, hair clips), broaches, and product mascots. Unit price: R38.00 (single-sided)

Everyone loves our Learn-By-Playing double-sided characters!

• Therapists – Occupational, Speech and Educational – when communicating with their young patients. A sensitive message can be explained using the character glove puppet as an effective communication medium. Children like to identify with animals or fantasy characters, which makes a glove puppet an ideal medium for increasing their motivation. > More
• Teachers – Remedial, Kindergarten, Grade 0 – Grade 2 – as an extension of a lesson or in storytelling – an ideal medium for a teacher to motivate young learners, to ask children questions or to act out simple role-plays with them. The joy of hearing a story being read can be greatly enhanced when a character from the story is brought to life in the form of a glove puppet – used by the reader to animate the tale. The teacher can use a character glove puppet to ask children questions or to act out simple role-play exercises with them. > More
• Medical – Doctors, Dentists, Clinic and Hospital staff – a lighthearted way to ease a young child’s discomfort
• Child Guidance – Behavioral/Psychological evaluations & therapy – as an effective tool in training programs. Animated characters make a child’s imagination flourish.
• Librarians – Junior School and City Libraries – in storytelling.
• Parents & Family – as an aid to storytelling.

• Young children – as a toy; children usually like to experiment in play with a puppet, creating voices and movements and in many cases staging a strictly private performance.
• Company Mascot – to promote and advertise products or services (incorporating company logo);
• Book Publishers & Distributors – as a gift item to promote children’s books (a character from the particular book)
• Novelty Gift Item – retail or mail order item – the body of the glove puppet is filled with self-wrapped sweets or chocolates, small toys, biscuits or lucky packet. Traditional themes include Christmas, Valentine’s Day, and Easter.
• Competitions – as prizes; design characters to compliment product branding.
• Pharmaceutical Products (e.g. attach a finger puppet or felt bobble to promote pediatric  brands such a vitamin chewy sweeties, cough syrup, and so forth).

Contact Theresa (ecottage@gmail.com) to order any of our standard characters or to design custom characters to fit your theme or brand.