Conker puppets at christmas

While out walking with family over Christmas my cousin collected a bagful of conkers (a little out of season!) upon bringing them back she asked me if we could make something with them so we got out my sketchbook and made up some drawings.

I drew up a little dragon marionette that followed a similar idea to a caterpillar fashioned from egg boxes which I had made earlier that year with some children at a playcenter. She followed my lead and drafted a marionette of a dragonfly. We had a lot of fun thinking about patterns and color and what sort of movements we wanted to achieve.

These are the finished puppets:

For the record, hot glue is not an ideal method for attaching Fimo to conkers... I think superglue with foam or felt would have got us a much more durable result. It was a fun little project though and a nice activity I can adapt for playwork next autumn.