Polar Bear Finger Puppets

These cute polar bear puppets are a great winter kids craft and they are perfect combined with a favorite children’s book about polar bears. 

When the weather gets cold and snowy my daughter always gets out some of her favorite books about polar bear’s at bedtime. She has a favorite called Polar Babies (affiliate) and reading it always gets us in the mood for making something crafty.  These adorable polar bear finger puppets make such a fun make and play craft for preschoolers.

Close up image of adult with their fingers inside the polar bear finger puppet showing how to use it.

[This polar bear craft was originally published on December 11, 2015. It has been republished and updated to include a new polar bear finger puppets template, how-to video, an updated tutorial and photos.]

How to Make Polar Bear Puppets

Read our easy step by step tutorial below for how to create your own polar bear puppet craft. Make sure to watch our how-to video tutorial inside this post before get started too.

Supplies needed for these polar bear finger puppets:

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Instructions for making this polar bear craft:

1. Download and print out the polar bear puppet template on white cardstock paper. Cut out the polar bear body, head and ears from the template.

Pro Tip: I highly recommend using heavy weight cardstock when creating your polar bears as this helps give some strength and durability to the puppets.

Four image collage showing the printed out craft template, how to cut out the finger puppet holes in the template with a circle punch, how to glue together the polar bear pieces and how to add the facial features to the polar bear puppets.

2. Use your 3/4-inch circle punch to cut out the two circles on the polar bear body.  These are the finger holes for your puppet.

3. Glue the polar bear head at the top of the polar bear body with a glue stick. Then glue each of the ears onto your polar bear.

Related: Giraffe Finger Puppet Craft

Two polar bear finger puppets laying next to each other on a pink background with snowflake stickers scattered around.

4. Add a generous amount of glue on the back of your small black pom pom. Then glue the pom pom nose onto the polar bear puppet.

5. Finish your finger puppets by gluing on your googly eyes and then using a black marker to draw a mouth on your polar bear.

Adult with their fingers inside the polar bear puppet playing with it and using it to knock down a pile of white pom poms.

Time to play with your polar bear puppets

Your cute little guy is now ready for play! To play with your cute polar bears, put two of your fingers into the holes at the bottom of the puppet to create the two front polar bear legs. Now move your fingers around and run your polar bear to and fro.

We found it was fun to make a pile of white pom-poms to look like big snow balls and then we let our polar bears have fun knocking it down.

Close up vertical image of adult with their fingers in the polar bear puppets showing how to use it with the words "polar bear finger puppets" on the bottom of the photo.

Try coupling this cute polar bear puppet craft with a fun polar bear children’s book. Here are some of our favorites:

– Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Here? by Bill Martin Jr. and Eric Carle

– The Three Snow Bears by Jan Brett

– Bed Time for Little Bears by David Bedford

– Polar Babies by Susan Ring

More fun and easy winter kids crafts

Want more winter animal puppet fun? Make an adorable reindeer finger puppet to go with your polar bears.

Preschoolers will love making these winter windsocks and watching them sway in the breeze. Learn how to make a penguin, snowman and polar bear.

These winter gnome finger puppets are super adorable and oh so fun! Make them for winter or any time fo the year with our free template.

Check out this amazing list of over 20 fun and easy winter animal crafts for kids!

The Winter months are a great time to learn about Arctic and Antarctic Animals and there are so many fabulous children's books to accompany learning about them. Here is a round up of awesome Arctic and Antarctic Animal Crafts for Kids.

 

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