Welcome to the Awana Cubbie room at our church! This puppet theater my husband and I designed and built. We used plywood to create the main structure of the theater. It is made up of 4 pieces of plywood attached with hinges on the sides. The tree branch leaf portion is a separate piece that is attached to two 2 x 4’s on the back. After connecting everything together, we painted it and added 1 x 2’s to trim off the front to look like a barn. We also added decorative hinges and a door pull on the front, so it would look like a barn half door. We painted details on the barn to look like wood slates and on the tree, so the trunk would look like wood and the green to look like clusters of leaves.

I bought wood apples at Michaels, painted them red and hot glued them to the leaves. Each year I buy apples from the Lakeshore learning, put a picture of each child on one and laminate them. Then I put the fuzzy side of a velcro dot on the backs and I put the clear prickly side of the velcro dots in various places of the leaf section. As an incentive to complete the “Under the Apple” section in the Cubbie handbook, they get to hang their apple up. You can see the apples up in one of the pictures down below.

Here is a link to the “rough” plans if you have a handy person that would like to build it for you:

Click here for a printable .pdf of the rough plan

 

 

 

 

Here are pictures of the back, so you can see how it was put together.  (Don’t mind the damaged leaf section! We had to change rooms for Cubbies a couple years ago and it was damaged in the move) We hung black fabric to cover the holes, so whoever is puppeteering, just sticks the puppet up through the curtain.  At the top of the curtain, we just clip binder clips to hold the puppet scripts.

 

This is our Awana night setup. We lay out an apple mat for each child that has their name on it, so they learn how to recognize their name and it helps to keep them seated during story time. The stage we made to look like the inside of a barn, with added 2 x 4’s to look like a horse stable. For decorations, I searched thrift stores, antique shops and feed stores for real farm accessories.

The Chicken coop was a repurposed shelf from a previous stage build. I made chicken out of bath towels from a pattern that I found online. Here is the link:  http://www.aokcorral.com/projects/how2mar2010.htm#.UNGQ-8N7KnI.pinterest

For the hay in the chicken coop, I cut about a 2 1/2 foot wide strip of yellow felt that was the width of each shelf, then I cut narrow strips on the part that hung out over the edge of the shelf.

The horse and the goat, my husband designed. We drew and painted them on thicker luan board, then cut them out.

 

We framed pictures of Cubbie Bear, Luvie Lamb and Katie Collie in unfinished wood frames that I painted red. We drilled holes in the top of the frame and hung them up with red gingham ribbon. For our group tables, I bought wood chalk boards and painted the Cubbie characters on each one. We hot glued a painted wood apple to the front, drilled holes, then tied red gingham ribbon to hang them on sign holders. I bought the colored caddies at the Dollar Tree, along with the matching crayon containers.

I hope that this give you some ideas for your Cubbie Room! Please share and link this post if you want and if you have any questions, just leave me a comment. God bless!