Sugar Glider (Flying Squirrel)

by Folkmanis

$47.90 ~~$57.95~~ /

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A soft, wide-eyed glider swoops across the room on your child's hand.

🎭 Brings stories: the hand-puppet body sits over the whole hand, so one wiggle of the fingers moves the mouth and the glider's body
🪂 Glides naturally: sculpted in a mid-flight gliding pose, ready to swoop, leap and land
🧸 Feels gentle: soft plush with a light body that suits small hands from 3 years
🔇 Plays quietly: no batteries, no sounds, so the only voice is your child's
📏 Fits school-age hands: about 38cm long and just 64g, light enough for a long puppet show
🏆 Trusted maker: Folkmanis has made hand puppets since 1976

The Educator's Note

The sculpted gliding pose gives children a character with a built-in action. They start telling a story straight away, without needing a script or a prop box.
Working the mouth and steering the puppet builds the finger and thumb control behind pencil grip and scissor use, and it does it through play that children choose to repeat.
It is silent, battery-free and packs flat, so it works for solo play, rest time and car trips, and it connects pretend play to real animal knowledge, since gliders live in Australian forests.

Play Specifications

🧒 3 years +

Recommended for ages 3 years +

📖 Storyteller

Role Play & Imagination

🔇 Silent

No sound

👤 Independent Play

Solo / Self-Correcting

🧳 Travel Friendly

Compact / Portable / Car-Friendly

👥 Group Play

Collaborative / Multi-Player

🤏 Fine Motor

Precision & Grip

🗣️ Language

Speech & Vocabulary

💡 Creativity

Innovation & Imagination

The Educator's Note

The sculpted gliding pose gives children a character with a built-in action. They start telling a story straight away, without needing a script or a prop box.
Working the mouth and steering the puppet builds the finger and thumb control behind pencil grip and scissor use, and it does it through play that children choose to repeat.
It is silent, battery-free and packs flat, so it works for solo play, rest time and car trips, and it connects pretend play to real animal knowledge, since gliders live in Australian forests.

Play Specifications

🧒 3 years +

📖 Storyteller

🔇 Silent

👤 Independent Play

🧳 Travel Friendly

👥 Group Play

🤏 Fine Motor

🗣️ Language

💡 Creativity

Slip a hand inside and this wide-eyed glider is ready to swoop, chatter and land on the nearest cushion. The movable mouth gives children an instant character to speak through, with no setup and no batteries.

Built for ages 3 and up, it grows with their storytelling: from giving the glider a simple voice at 3 to staging a puppet show with a beginning, middle and end by 6. Puppet play also builds the finger control and confident speaking that carry into prep and Year 1.

Also available in a great value bundle

This glider suits children who like to narrate their play and parents who want a toy that gets them talking.

The 3 to 4 year old who gives every soft toy a voice and is ready to act out short stories
The 5 to 6 year old who enjoys putting on puppet shows for family, or who is practising reading aloud and storytelling
A child who loves Australian animals or nocturnal creatures and asks endless questions about how they live
A parent or carer looking for a quiet, battery-free option for solo play at rest time, on road trips or in waiting rooms

Watch it take off

The first thing children do with this puppet is make it glide. The body is sculpted in a gliding pose, so it already looks mid-flight. A sweep of the arm sends it from the couch to the bookshelf, while the fingers open and close the mouth.

It is a hand puppet, so the child is the engine. Every sound, voice and plot twist comes from them, which is exactly what you want at 3 to 5 years, when pretend play moves from copying real life to inventing new scenes. By 5 and 6, the same puppet becomes a performer in scripted shows for family and friends.

Where the skills build

Working the mouth and steering the puppet takes controlled finger and thumb movement, and it asks the hand to do several jobs at once. That is the same coordination used later for holding a pencil and cutting with scissors. Giving the puppet a voice builds confident speaking and listening, because children have to decide what the glider wants to say and how it would say it.

There is a real-world hook too. Sugar gliders are nocturnal marsupials that glide between trees in Australian forests, which makes this puppet a good starting point for talking about Australian animals: where they sleep, what they eat and how they move. Note that Folkmanis designs this puppet as a flying squirrel, a different animal from the sugar glider, and the two make a good comparison.

Easy to use, easy to store

There is nothing to assemble and nothing to charge. The puppet is about 38cm long, 15cm wide and 5cm tall, and weighs about 64g, so it packs flat into a toy box or a car seat pocket. It is quiet play, which suits a rest-time puppet show, a car trip or a sibling's nap next door. It works solo, with a parent as audience, or as one character in a group puppet show.

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