DLTK's Crafts for Kids
Paper Bag Phoenix Craft

This phoenix is a simple puppet craft that is fun for young children to make.  It makes a great project for preschool and kindergarten kids and works well with various fantasy books or a Greek mythology theme.

Materials:

• a paper lunch bag
• red paint or red paper,
• a printer,
• some crayons,
• scissors,
• glue,
• paper for the printer

Optional:

• big wiggly eyes

What is the Phoenix?

In Greek mythology, the phoenix was a bird that lived in Arabia.  Each morning the phoenix would awake and bath in a well near its roost.  While it bathed, it sang a beautiful song that the sun god Apollo stopped to hear each dawn before he drove his sun chariot across the sky.

According to the myth, only one phoenix existed on earth at a time.  When it grew old, the phoenix would build a nest of myrrh.  The phoenix would settle its tired, aging body into the center of the nest which would burst into flames when the sun rose.  The phoenix would be consumed by the flames and from the ashes of the ancient bird, a new phoenix would be reborn.

Print the Template:

• Print out the template of choice (color or b&w),
• Color (as required) and cut out the template pieces.

Get Familiar with Your Paper Bag:

• I'm going to walk through this slowly.  Look at your paper bag.
• It should be closed and flat like a piece of paper.  Just like when they are brand new.
• On one side, it's all smooth.  This will be the BACK of your puppet
  • It's important that all the kids get the back and front straight at the beginning!
• On the other side there's a flippy tab (which is typically the bottom of the bag when you're carrying your lunch around...)
  • This flippy tab will be the HEAD
• Lift the flippy tab up a bit.  Underneath of the tab will be the mouth,
  • When the child puts her hand in the bag, she'll be able to make the puppet talk.
• Look at the rest of the front of the bag.  (The 3/4 or so of the bag below the part with the flippy tab)  This will be the BODY.
• Look at the sides of the bag.  There should be a FLAP of paper.
  • We'll be slipping the wings into this flap.
  • If the kids goof and glue the wings onto the front or back of the bag, it isn't a big deal.
• OK, now that we're comfy with our bags, let's craft!

Assemble your puppet:

• Cover the FLAP and the BODY of the paper bag with red paper (just glue it on and trim) or paint it red and let dry.
• Glue the feather tuft to the top of the HEAD
• Glue the eyes onto the HEAD just under the feathers.  If you like, you can use wiggly eyes instead of the paper template pieces.
• Glue the beak under the eyes.  It will likely hang down over a little bit of the BODY.  Make sure you just put glue on top of the beak (where it touches the HEAD) so you don't end up gluing the mouth shut.
• Glue the wings into the FLAP.
• Glue the feet onto the bottom of the BODY
• Glue the tail onto the BACK.

Templates:

• Close the template window after printing to return to this screen.
• Set page margins to zero if you have trouble fitting the template on one page (FILE, PAGE SETUP or FILE, PRINTER SETUP in most browsers).

Template 1:   (color)   or   (B&W)

Template 2:   (color)   or   (B&W)

Template 3:   (color)   or   (B&W)

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