hello my name is Denise Gard and I would like to show you today how to make your own sock puppet and the very first sock puppet I ever created was Mitzi she became my signature sock puppet that I use in all of my programs but she was originally created for toddler time for the Pikes Peak Library District and I made her she has her signature hair that's blonde with her little bow in the back and of course she has fun googly eyes and a very expression at mouth that she likes to laugh and she can smile and of course when she's in a bad mood laughs she can frown sockpuppets allow children to play and imagine and create and children can create their own sock puppet with just a few simple steps the first step of course is the mouth you want the mouth to be in an oval shape or an egg shape and this allows you to put a pinky and thumb on the bottom the rest of your fingers across the top you can make her talk a B D F G L that's right Mitzi doesn't know her ABCs so you can have the mouth be smiling talking or frowning after I created Mitzi I thought it would be really fun to give her a sister so I created Megan as you create a sock puppet you'll notice that they're not just a sock puppet they become a character and each puppet has its own unique voice children can play around creating their own voices that they give to their sock puppets for instance my name is Megan and I'm her older sister and she always tells my stuff but that's okay cuz I'm gonna be a singer yeah Megan's a drama queen she's also a teenager but one of my most creative puppets came when I found in my drawer a lone sock that had no match and I know many of you back home had the same problem of having lots of socks without matches so I took that sock and I decided to create a puppet and as I put his mustache on him he suddenly took on a laugh it just kind of came out of him like this that's right my name is the evil mr. Snively and I steal library books Oh No you steal library books that's right I do but don't worry Mitsy our heroine she solves the case gets the books back and puts mr. Snively in this place rats foiled again hmm puppets can be so much fun for children they can have their own creative time with them and it's much more interesting than just watching TV but you may want to make something besides a person you may want to make a very cute fun unique bird with three eyes and lots of feathers and maybe some bells on the back and it's a lot of fun or you may want to create an insect or I've had students create wolves or other animals this particular one is a fly and last but not least for Christmas I created the smallest elf ever gee I get to ride with Santa and I sing jingle bells now let's talk about how do we create a sock puppet well first of course you need a sock make sure you ask your parents if you can use the sock to make a puppet and especially if this is a sock that doesn't have a pair it's the perfect sock for a puppet you always want to make sure that the heel of the sock is on the back side this is going to be your front you're going to have your mouth pasted in here with the hot glue gun and when you bend it your eyeballs go up here and then you can add your hair earrings ears wolf ears whatever you want to put on because the mouth fits perfectly just inside that space now one of the things that we love with our sock puppets our hair and when you make hair what I like to do is I go like this around my arm making like a sling almost and I do it a couple of times it's very difficult to hot glue gun individual pieces of yarn down onto your sock puppet it's much easier if we fold it together and then we cut a piece and we tie the yarn in the very center just like so and what that does is it allows us to have a point where we can do the hot glue gun so just like this so you put a little dot of glue right there in the center and you put it right up here and you have hair for your puppet and then if you want your hair to spread out all you have to do is and they're your puppet has some beautiful blue hair now when you do use your sock puppet when I created these I used a hot glue gun because it makes them last longer you can also of course so things on such as bells but again with a hot glue gun you want to make sure that you have a parent to help you you never ever want to touch a hot glue gun by yourself because hot glue guns can burn your fingers so please please make sure that you have your parents supervision and I'm Denise garde with how to make your very own sock puppet