Simple Pom-Pom Marionettes

What do you do when you are nine and ten and have a bagful of dollar store pom-poms and googly eyes? You make pony marionettes. All morning.

A whole loudly colored herd.

You congratulate yourself when you add wooden beads for the feet, because they make a fun clickety click sound on hard floors.

You learn that what you don’t do is lay them down! Their threads can get mighty tangled. You hang them instead on drawer knobs and hooks when you are done playing.

Oh! You are nine? And you are also going to make some? Here’s what you’ll do:

1) Use Fabri-Tac with your mom’s supervision to glue colorful pom-poms together to make your favorite four legged animal. “Yes,” you will tell your mother, “it would be nicer to sew them together instead of gluing them, but I don’t have time for that because I want to play.” See below for a suggested schematic. (When you are running out of pom-poms it’s OK to improvise.)

2) You’ll add googly eyes and a pipe cleaner tail with more glue because it’s cute. You’ll pick up really big googly eyes from the box and use them as monocles because it is wildly funny.

3) You’ll glue plastic or wood beads on for feet, so they clickety click.

4) You’ll thread a needle with a long piece of quilting thread and tie a big knot in one end. Then you’ll do brain surgery on the marionette’s head starting at the bottom, so that there is a thread coming out the top. Now you’ll do the same for its tushy tush.

5) You will remember not to leave the needle on the table. You will put it back in the needle cushion so it doesn’t fall on the carpet and wait for your mother’s foot to come visit. 

6) You’ll wrap the ends of the threads several times around opposite ends of a popsicle stick and secure them with more glue.

7) You’ll clickety click with your new marionettes all around the kitchen.

8) Then you’ll make more until almost the whole bag of pom-poms is gone because it is still summer and you can do that!