The Ancient Greeks invented many forms of theatre, and one of these was the use of puppets. This dates back over 2500 years. The word puppet comes from the Greek, meaning 'drawn by strings'. Another ancient group of peoples who developed puppets were the people of the Indus Valley in North India. They were being used at least 2300 years ago.

People have enjoyed making and using puppets because they give a way of acting and dancing that gives room for imagination and actions that people could not perform. It gives a chance for imaginary characters to be created, and for things we normally think of as immovable, like chairs, to come alive. The whole art of animation that is now so popular on film and TV has its origins in puppets.

One of the simplest puppets is the finger puppet. Nothing moves on a finger puppet, except the movements due to bending fingers and moving the hand. The picture above shows a variation of this called sock puppets. Sock puppets allow the whole hand to go inside and the the hand to be opened and closed to imitate speaking. Finger and sock puppets would be the sort of puppets that you could make. They are great for telling stories or having conversations.

Hand puppets are made to look more like real things. Think of the puppets used for Punch and Judy. In the picture above, you can see the arm of the puppeteers covered with cloth. In these puppets the arms and head move.

Bigger versions of the hand puppet are the arm puppets. These often appear on entertainment shows because they are big enough to be shows with their puppeteer, who often does the voice in front of the audience.

Marionettes are string puppets, suspended and controlled by a number of strings. This kind of puppet Looks simple, but needs much greater skill to operate.

Rod puppets and shadow puppets use cutout pictures with a rod stuck behind them. The whole cutout moves as the puppeteer moves their hand and arm. These kind of puppets are traditional in SE Asia, and were very popular in Europe and North America for children's performances in Victorian times.

Ventriloquist's dummy is something like a hand or arm puppet, but with more face movements. The puppets are called dummies.