I would like to be able to make a simple trigger type rod puppet with children - anyone have some ideas on how to do this? I looked back through some of the past threads and found a few ideas but thought I would just ask if any one has attempted this and been successful. Thanks!

Well the simplest of rod puppets are simply a stick with a head and body attached to it.   I've seen for kid workshops where you glue a styro ball on top of a dowel rod then attach ribbon or string arms that have some type of hand glued on the end. Then small dowels off those hands to manipulate them.  I guess you could elaborate on that some and use a square piece of styro for the body that you then ran the arms off of, then dress that up.

You could even use a wooden spoon and just let them glue felt for clothing and wool for hair onto it. Even kindergarten kids would be able to have fun with that one. How old are the children?

Using fish hook removers (most camping or fishing stores sell them) is an easy and cheap way to make a puppet with a trigger controlled mouth.

An umbrella can give a nice control, too. Have you seen this one?

I already do all the simple wooden spoon puppets, and the variety of other rod type puppets.(I think I may have even posted pictures of some of the wonderful creations the kids in my workshops have made - or you can go to my blog page on my website and take a look!)
I was looking for a way to add the moving mouth to the rod puppet. The fish hook remover is something I had not thought of! I will have to look into that! That would be similar to the plastic grabber things that can be found in toy catalogs but that break VERY easily (which is why I don't use those any more!!)
More ideas are always welcome!

OWS has a Rod puppet flower pattern using this technique. You might be able to adapt it to use with children.

OWS has a Rod puppet flower pattern using this technique. You might be able to adapt it to use with children.

Yes - I have that pattern and thought about seeing if I could adapt it but I thought that before I went to the work of doing that I would see if someone out there had already done it to save me some headaches! 

Use a hair tie as the mouth, with fish line running down the front of the puppet to a nylon ring. pull the ring, the mouth opens, release the ring, the mouth closes. Something like D-----o just rotated 90 and glue the bar part of the D. Make sense?

I have made the OWS flower puppet and it the mechanism is probably more involved than you want to get into with kids.

Have fun,
Sue

Use a hair tie as the mouth, with fish line running down the front of the puppet to a nylon ring. pull the ring, the mouth opens, release the ring, the mouth closes

Yes, I was thinking that if I cannot figure a trigger mechanism out, I would fall back on the "hair scrunchi" mouth. I wanted something that could be worked with one hand holding the rod and opening the mouth while the other hand could be free to operate the rod arms. I could make the "scrunchi mouth" work that way with a bit of trial and error I think. Just making sure the ring was easy to pull up and down with the thumb.