Paper Tiger Puppet Craft for Chinese New Year

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Roar. Our love for Easy Tiger Crafts continues! Here we have our easy Paper Tiger Puppet Crafts! These paper puppets are soo easy to make, once you know the basics, challenge the kids to come up with their own designs! These are part of our set of fantastic Tiger crafts in our Tiger Activities collection for Chinese New Year Zodiac Animals!

Paper Tiger Puppet Craft
First shared in May 2021

The great thing about today’s craft is that you do NOT need a Tiger Puppet Printable! These hand puppets are based on basic shapes and everyone will be able to make them!!

This tiger craft would make a great addition to any Year of Tiger activities for Chinese New Year 2022 (and beyond!), or as part of an wild life study units. Or make them just because they are so cute!

What Year is the Year of the Tiger?

Year of the Tiger is in: 1926, 1938, 1950, 1962, 1974, 1986, 1998, 2010, 2022, 2034.

In 2022, it will be the year of the Chinese Zodiac Tiger! Find our more about the Year of the Tiger here.

To make your Tiger Hand Puppet, you will need:

  • Orange paper (though at a push, use white paper and colour it in? Or make a WHITE tiger, even better!)
  • Some contrasting paper (we used a dark yellow, but white would work too)
  • Black pen
  • Scissors
  • Glue stick

How to make a paper tiger puppet – step by step instructions!

Watch the video tutorial on auto play or check out the step by step instructions:

fold puppet length ways

To save on paper, trim of a strip of orange first – you will use this later to make the tiger ears. If you have enough orange paper scraps, you can skip this!

Fold the paper along it long edge, approximately 1/3 of the way up.

Fold down the top long edge to meet, bt overlap the bottom edge. Secure with a glue stick or some sticky tape!

fold the paper into a hand puppet

With the seam of your fold on the outside, fold your paper in half.

Then fold over flap.

Flip and fold over the other.

You will end up with a type of “M”. The point in the middle will be your mouth. The long sides of the M, fit you fingers.

paper tiger features

Cut out all your paper tiger shapes. The basic hapes are simple – some orange ovals for the ears. You can add a second set of smaller ovals in contrasting colours if you wish. Or you can draw the inside of the ear in pen.

A large oval for the mouth part – draw on a black triangle for the nose, a line and some dots.

Glue these features in place. Note: the ears go in the “inside” of your hand puppet, so that they don’t get in the way of your hand.

Add eyes and more tiger stripes with your black pen and you are finished!

Tiger Hand Puppet

Isn’t he adorable?

You can add additional features such as a red tongue and tiger teeth!!

You can also experiment with different Tiger Face features – e.g. use our tiger corner bookmark for inspiration?!

TIger Corner Bookmark Designs

Check out the rest of our easy and fun Tiger Activities collection

year of the tiger crafts

as well as our Chinese New Year Crafts for Kids:

Great Chinese New Year's Ideas for Kids

We have many more great Homeamde Puppet Crafts for you here:

DIY Puppet Ideas

See more Chinese New Year Zodiac Animal Crafts here:

Exploring Chinese New Year with Animal Crafts for the Chinese Zodiac

And all our Chinese New Year Crafts for Kids, here.