Meri, Girl Hand Puppet

Meri, our 46cm high Girl Hand Puppet, is Maori, lives in Hamilton New Zealand with her family, and loves her home, school, and friends. She wants to share her life with you. Learn about life in Hamilton New Zealand and Maori culture with Marie.

Meri is made from premium quality soft velour fabric. She has long straight black hair, light medium brown skin, black embroidered eyebrows and eyelashes. Her carefully embroidered beautiful slanted brown engaging eyes look at you with love and kindness. She has cute fingers, toes, ears, nose and navel. She is made with excellent detail and is stuffed to look more like a soft toy, fabric stuffed doll, character or person. Her stuffing and design makes it easier for you to hold her and to manipulate her as a puppet. You will fall in love with Meri from the moment you pick her up and play with her.

An average size adult hand and fingers fit comfortably from the back of her body into her head, mouth and arms. Her mouth opens and she has a tongue. Her head, body, arms and legs are stuffed to allow easy handling for play and to make the puppet more like a stuffed soft toy. Bring Meri to life when you put your hand inside her and move her head, mouth and arms.

Join Meri for Maori kapa haka (group dance) or a special ceremony. Your friends, teachers and family will love Meri! You can take all her clothes off to change her outfit.

She is wearing beautiful traditional Maori dance clothing;

• Piupiu Skirt is fringed and made using black & white checked pattern fabric that resembles  fabric woven from flax. The black waist band fabric ties in a lovely bow at the back. Red under skirt.
• colourful woven tipare or headband.
• red bodice or top has buttons at the back and a v-shaped piece of fabric in white and black pattern that matches the fringed skirt.

Take her to school or feature her in a puppet show about Maori culture from New Zealand. She will inspire you to share stories about life in Hamilton New Zealand with your friends and family.

Meri loves to play and is a great listener. She can be a chatter box and will keep you company for hours becoming your best friend. Bring her to life and share many experiences with her.

She will inspire your imagination, allow you the freedom to be creative and to come out of your shell. If you’re shy, you can use Meri and speak through her to articulate how you are feeling or to gain courage to play with other kids. You can use her to re-tell stories you heard or to create your own stories.

Research with early education specialists has highlighted and proven that Puppets as an educational toy for a child’s growing and developing mind and as a teacher’s or parent’s aid has many benefits;

• By bringing their puppet to life as an independent personality, children will gain courage to speak in front of their classmates and to practise public speaking. Meri will assist them to interact and socialise with other children and adults.
• Through Meri children will be able to articulate emotional stresses and feelings and resolve them. They can express themselves, gain confidence and become brave with a can-do attitude.
• Children will use their puppet to role play and repeat various tasks that they find challenging improving their confidence and self-esteem.
• The puppets will work fine and gross motor skill dexterity, and hand-eye coordination. Children need to put their hand inside the puppet to manipulate the arms, face, mouth and tongue. Meri can be undressed to allow a change of clothes. Some puppet clothes have buttons, zippers and shoelaces. Practising tasks such as; doing up buttons or tying shoelaces will give them confidence and help them become independent.
• Puppets inspire imaginative play, trigger creativity, tests memory, and develops language and reading skills. When children re-tell a story they heard, you will see what they remembered and get an insight into their use of language.
• Children can perform a puppet show, which encourages organisational skills, script writing when they create their own story, language development and use of language when they perform the show, or they may express emotions or feeling that are bothering them through their performance.

Quality tested to meet all international standards including CE, ASTM, CPSIA and ISO.

Suitable for children 3+ years old.

Puppets as an educational toy will:

• develop language and reading skills.
• freely express emotional issues and resolve them, by using the puppet as an extension of self.
• trigger imaginative and creative play when children perform their own puppet show.
• work motor skills by manipulating the puppet; or when taking the puppet’s clothes off or putting them back on the puppet, or when using buttons, zippers, or shoelaces.
• gain confidence, become brave and improve self-esteem.
• encourages socialising, team building, organisational skills and public speaking.