Puppet Ideas
A great puppet resource is Puppets and Masks: Stagecraft and Storytelling, by Nan Rump, Davis Publications, 1996, ISBN 0871922983 or 9780871922984 (copies still available on amazon).
This book describes how to make puppets from basic art supplies (paper plates and construction paper) and recycled objects (empty plastic bottles, fabric scraps, ....).
If you are doing, for example, a "Friendly Beasts" skit you can also use your imagination and adapt instructions for one sort of animal to another or adapt people puppet characters (i.e. make a camel or donkey using the horse or dragon suggestions.)