If you give a moose a muffin...

The Podlings choosing buttons for their puppets

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We currently have a copy of "If you give a moose a muffin" by Laura Joffe Numeroff and Felicia Bond on loan from the library and it is one of the Podlings current favourites. It is a funny story about what happens to a young boy when he sees a moose in his garden and offers him a muffin. Before he knows it, the moose is in his house and is eating jam, wearing a cardigan, making puppets, painting scenery, dressing up as a ghost and generally making a mess. It is a lovely book and one of those rare gems that you don't mind reading again and again.
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At one point in the story, the moose makes sock puppets, so Mum and I thought it would be fun to do this with the Podlings. When asked what kind of sock puppet they would like, they both decided they wanted a moose. We let them choose the socks they wanted to use and let them explore the contents of my button box so they could choose some eyes. When the buttons were selected, mum and I quickly sewed them on the socks while the Podlings chose the colour felt they wanted for antlers. Mum and I then drew the antlers freehand, cut them out and sewed them on. By the time we got to the noses, the Podlings had lost interest, so we just got on and did those by ourselves. I definitely think mum and I had the most fun doing this!
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Mum sewing on some eyes

The finished puppets (mine is the one on the left, made following Tom's suggestions), along with the moose in the story

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To finish off the theme of the afternoon, we made some blackberry muffins using blackberries we'd picked the day before and had them after tea (blackberries feature in the story too). Tom really wanted to paint some scenery and put on a puppet show just like the moose, but it was getting a bit late in the day by this point. We did read the story twice more at bedtime though!
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Mum and me with our carefully constructed sock puppets