Summer Fun Day 14 - Finger Weaving "Magic" Worm Puppets

On a whim, I picked up a "Magic Wigglee" worm (click here to see a campy '70s style ad for them, if you don't know what they are), hanging at eye level in one of the aisles, at the grocery store.  It brought back a vague childhood memory, and I couldn't resist it, even though I seemed to remember there being a trick to them that made them harder to use, than it seemed.  I thought the older children might get a kick out of the little guy, anyway.

It turns out, it's a puppet, with a thin string attached to its nose, and it is not the easiest thing to manipulate. But, I was right, the older children got a real kick out it, and quickly snatched it up, and ran off to Google a tutorial.  Oh the things I could have mastered in my childhood, if only I'd had the current world of video tutorials at my finger tips.

What I forgot to take into account, was the cries of, "I want one!", "Did you get one for me?", "Can I try?" that would naturally issue forth from the younger children, the second they saw the fuzzy blue fellow flitting, and flying through their older siblings' fingers.  Of course, there had only been two at the store, and the last one was gone well before we ever got back to check.  That's pretty much par for the course in small town, Montana life, but the mountains are beautiful, so we don't complain, we make do.

In this case, we made do with a scrap of fun fur, left over from our finger knit boas (click the link for finger knitting instructions). As it turns out, the exact same method worked for making a worm puppet, except we only used two fingers to knit over, instead of four...

...to make sort of a messy, seven inch chain.  It didn't look like much to begin with.

But, with the addition of glued on googly eyes...

...and a couple of feet of four pound fishing line tied to "nose"...

...our homemade wiggle worm was ready to come to life.  Well...

...maybe after a little more practice. But, you get the idea.

It's great to be a homeschooler.