Goliath (1 Samuel 17)

The crux of what happened to Goliath comes down to an encounter with just 2 characters (plus a shield bearer), and so lends itself to being acted out. Acting out stories where boys throw stones, however, may not be the wisest move, so I’ve gone for finger puppets!

These puppets, unlike traditional soft finger puppets, are designed to wear with the head at the opposite end to the finger tip. While this is placed in the Make section it is beast done in small groups with each group making one set of puppets to acts out the story. The Goliath puppet can be made without the legs if you have children under the age of 7.

All three characters can be printed on one page (PDF LINK). As well as the printout you will need 3 split pins, scissors, a glue stick, and some sticky tape. The area’s you need to add glue are marked with small black and white squares.

Cut out each of the shapes and arrange them by character.

Goliath is made from 2 leg pieces, one head, one body, one head strip and one finger strap.

David is made from one body, one arm, and one finger strap.

The shield bearer is made from one body, one shield, and one finger strap.

The finger straps can be replaced by strips of paper if you prefer, the two rings are wrapped round the finger, tightly at the finger tip and loosely above. Using 2 straps makes the characters less floppy. Simply glue the straps to the back of the finished puppets.

SHIELD BEARER:
The shield bearer is the easiest. Cut the pieces out carefully, push a split pin through the middle of the shield and sightly to one side of the character’s body.

DAVID
Again David is also simple, though his hand is a little tricky to cut out, be particularly careful with the sling. This time a split pin goes through shoulder joint.

GOLIATH :
Starting with the head, take the neck piece and attach the glue end behind the eyes. This will allow the chin to hang below the neckline.

The other end of the neck piece needs to be attached to the body with a split pin, I’ve punched holes to show where this is attached. If you are working with younger children then leave Goiath looking like this.

GOLIATH’S LEGS:
Cut along the red lines and then add glue to the foot square and fold upwards. Fold the foot back down so it looks like the picture to the right

The two long tabs secure the foot in place. Fold them both where they join to the foot and to each other. You can also fold the glue tab ends. Curl the foot round and secure into place.

Now wrap the leg round your chosen finger placing your finger tip in the middle of the leg. Tape into place. Then secure the foot to the back of the leg using the last foot tab. This is hard to describe in words, and a little fiddly, but really quite intuitive once you have the pieces in your hands.