Egg box caterpillar puppet

 

There has been much debate about whether this is a snake or a caterpillar.  It looks segmented like a caterpillar, but has no legs like a snake.  Whichever it is, they're fun to make and fun to play with.

Things you need:

Egg boxes
Blu tack or modelling clay
Something for piercing with (a pencil will do)
Beads or cut up straws
String
Two sticks of some kind (wooden spoons would probably work)
Something for eyes (we used googly eyes and glue, but you could draw them)

What to do:

Cut the egg boxes into individual "cups" - we had 24 eggs worth of egg box, but it can be more or less depending on how long you want your caterpillar to be

Poke hole in the middle of the bottom of each "cup" - put the Blu tack or modelling clay on the table in a lump, put the "cup" right way up on top and stab through the middle of the bottom to make a hole.

Wrap some of the string around the middles of the sticks to hold them together in a cross, then tie the string and cut it off.

The next step is to thread string through the egg box "cups".  This is about 2,000,000% easier if you tightly wrap some tape around the end of the string to make it like the end of a shoelace.

Next you need to get threading all the egg box "cups" on to a long piece of string with your beads or segments of straw in between each one.  We found three beads was about right (approx 1cm)

Tie a bead (or piece of straw) onto the string at each end of the caterpillar to stop the string from slipping through.

Next we gave it eyes.

Tie a length of string (approx 40cm long) near the head end, near the tail end and two more places evenly spaced along the body.

Tie the other end of each string to one end of the sticks you tied in a cross earlier.  As you tilt the cross around the caterpillar will wiggle.  

None of the strings need to be too tight, the caterpillar needs to be able to move freely.