Kids Can Make Their Own Shadow Puppets at the Academy Museum This Weekend
The Academy Museum's drop-in shadow-puppet workshop runs Saturday from 12:30 to 2:30 p.m., free with admission. Kids 17 and under get in free with a reservation. Outside LA, try the same idea with a flashlight and two paper characters.
If you need a Saturday plan on Miracle Mile that is not another mall loop, the Academy Museum has a craft table ready.
Drop-in Shadow Puppet Storytelling runs November 14 from 12:30 to 2:30 p.m. in the Shirley Temple Education Studio on Level LL1. The same window comes back on November 21.
Kids cut paper silhouettes, use mini flashlights, and put on a short show at a kid-sized shadow theater. The museum links the hour to its Family Matinees and the Level 1 shadow-play gallery, an early cousin of the movie screens upstairs.
A free-with-admission craft hour can cover a preschooler and a middle-schooler without a birthday-party RSVP.
How to walk in without drama
Reserve museum tickets before you leave the house. Kids 17 and under are free, but the museum still wants that advance hold.
Adults pay general admission. The workshop itself does not cost extra. Spots are first come, first served inside the two-hour window, so earlier in the block is safer on a busy Saturday.
Park near Museum Row or take a rideshare to the Wilshire entrance. Give yourself a few minutes to find LL1. The Shirley Temple Education Studio is on the lower level, not up by the Sphere lobby.
Want Frankenweenie or another Family Matinee too? That needs a separate film ticket. Do craft first or film first, depending on naps.
What kids actually do at the table
Educators set out paper for silhouettes. Kids shape characters, then test them against light on a small theater.
The museum calendar frames shadow puppetry as an ancestor of cinema. A five-year-old hears that as: make a bird move across a lit square. You get an hour that feels tied to movies without parking anyone in front of a phone.
Ask staff whether finished puppets can go home. If not, snap a photo of the wall show and leave the scissors at the studio.
At home: flashlight, paper, two characters
Not in Los Angeles this weekend? Copy the setup.
Tape a white sheet or a big piece of paper across a doorway. Dim the room. Point a phone flashlight or a regular flashlight at the sheet from a few feet back.
Cut two characters from black construction paper or cardstock. A kid and a dragon works. So does Gong Gong and a mooncake.
Tape each one to a chopstick, straw, or pencil.
Take turns telling a short story: someone wants something, something goes wrong, then someone helps. Keep it under five minutes so younger kids stay with you.
Want it bilingual? Name the characters in your heritage language and keep the action in English, or flip that. Whatever you will actually say out loud.
If you are already on Wilshire
After the workshop, do a short gallery loop or grab a snack at Fanny's. Skip trying to see the whole museum and the craft table in one nap window.
The November 21 repeat is on our Los Angeles City Life events board if Saturday fills up or someone wakes up sick.
If you are nowhere near Wilshire, the flashlight version still counts. Two paper characters and a blank wall will do.