If you’re waiting to audition for the perfect ant character for your puppet show, fret no more! Here is a DIY popsicle stick ant puppet craft for you!

Is there a creature on this planet that can eat pretty much anything? Like, it is really hard to find something they’ll not eat. I don’t know how many living creatures are like this, but I’m sure ants are among them!

Anyone who’s tried to get rid of ants knows that almost nothing works. They’ll eat up anything you put out to deter them, and still go looking for more in your kitchen cabinets. This persistence is probably why they outlived the dinosaurs!

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Fun Facts about Ants and Food

Ants have two stomachs, one for individual use and the other to store food for the entire colony
They prefer sugary items because of their high carbohydrate content, which provides energy to the ants
Ants have a special receptor in their taste buds to help them detect sugar
Once an ant finds sugar, it’ll inform the members of its colony about the sugar’s location
Ants share food among each other through direct mouth-to-mouth transfer

Well, ants are fascinating creatures, aren’t they? Although getting rid of them is quite annoying! In the meantime, let’s have some fun with a popsicle stick ant puppet craft!

Popsicle Stick Ant Puppet Craft

Supplies required:

Colored craft paper
Googly eyes
Popsicle sticks
Pencil
A pair of scissors
Craft glue
Markers

How to make the Popsicle Stick Ant Puppet Craft:

1. Download and print the Popsicle Stick Ant Puppet Craft Template. The template includes parts of the ant’s body, such as the head, thorax, abdomen, antennae, and legs, as well as the ant’s food.

2. Trace the parts of the template on craft paper of the appropriate colors and cut them out. You can use black, grey or brown for the ant – maybe avoid the bright colors! For the food, we’ve chosen red for the apple, light brown for the peanut and dark brown for the cookie.

3. Let’s start assembling our popsicle stick ant puppet! Attach the head cutout to the thorax, which is the smaller of the two body cutouts.

4. Attach the antenna cutouts to the top of the head.

5. Stick the googly eyes in the center of the ant’s face. Glue the cheeks right below the eyes. Use a black marker to draw a smile in between the cheeks. Your popsicle stick ant puppet is looking good!

6. Take the abdomen, which is the remaining body cutout. Attach two of the smaller legs to the bottom of the abdomen.

7. Use a black marker to draw vertical stripes on the abdomen.

8. Attach the abdomen pattern to the back of the ant’s thorax.

9. Attach the other two small leg cutouts to the bottom of the thorax.

10. Use glue to fix the longer leg cutouts on the ant’s thorax, but these should point upward instead of downward, like the other legs. Stick one of the longer legs in front and one behind, as shown below. The ant’s going to use these to hold on to his food.

11. Almost there! Apply some glue to the back of the ant’s thorax and attach it to a popsicle stick.

12. Now all that’s left to do is to give the ant some food! Attach a food cutout between the longer legs and secure it in place with glue or some sticky tape.

We’ve all seen the cartoons where the ants grab food from a picnic blanket and systematically take it to their homes! Well, I suppose they look something like this when they’re doing so! You can include this element in your puppet show, or some of the fun facts we featured earlier!

If you’d like to make more stick puppets for your puppet show, check these out: