If a cold winter afternoon is driving your kids a bit stir-crazy, then make crazy puppets with all that energy. Crazy bird puppets that is!

To start, paint paper plates with any colors your kids want. You’ll need two and half plates per bird, but we just went crazy (of course!) and painted more than we needed, ending up with about 7 or 8 plates.

Veronika really wanted to help, too, and loved mixing colors and alternating between large- and small-bristled brushes.

I needed some place to let all those plates dry. Ideally I would have had some place to hang them from clothespins, but I settled for laying them down on top of scrap paper in the bathtub. Once dry, we folded two plates in half and then stapled together. Place the half plate underneath the bottom one and staple on.

Now, your hands can insert between the two full-sized plates so you can work the “beak” of the bird to make it look like he’s cackling and cawing and talking. Travis helped glue on feathers and pom poms for decoration, and then these birds looked even crazier.

Put a sock on your wrist and you’ll even have the illusion of colorful neck feathers as you make the bird’s beak move.

Here’s hoping you have a crazy good time with these puppets.