Cut an 8-inch heart from gray construction paper as well as two black 5-inch narrow hearts, two gray 3-inch narrow hearts, two black 2-inch narrow hearts, one white 3-inch heart, one black 1-inch heart, two 1-inch white circles and two 1/2-inch black circles. Place the 8-inch heart on your work surface, point facing up and glue the white heart over the heart's top indent. Glue the small black heart on it to create the nose and snout. Glue one black 2-inch narrow heart inside one gray 3-inch narrow heart and repeat to make ears which are adhered to either side of the point. Glue the two black 5-inch narrow hearts with the points overlapping in the center of the heart and use the white and black circles to create eyeballs.
Cut and adhere the parts together for the raccoon face in Section 1 but also cut a large 10-inch gray heart as the body, a very narrow 10-inch heart as the tail, two 3-inch gray hearts for feet and two narrow 5-inch hearts to create arms. Glue the arms to each side of the large body heart, with the point facing up, and the small foot hearts to the heart curves. Glue the head over the point and the curved section of the tail heart on the back of the body.
Cut out one 3-inch gray heart and draw raccoon facial features onto it including the black rings for eyes and the ears. In lieu of drawing the features, very small hearts may be cut out and glued to make a raccoon head such as Section 1 but on a much smaller scale. Glue the raccoon head to a wooden craft stick or tongue depressor for a retelling activity. Make another slightly larger raccoon stick puppet as Chester's mother.
Dip each child's hand into a paper plate with finger paint or other washable paint on the bottom. Instruct each child to make a handprint with their fingers pointing 45-degrees to the right. Place his hand back in the paint and make another handprint with the fingers over the last handprint's finger marks but the hand angled to the right to create a heart. When the paint has dried, finger-paint facial features to make the handprint heart appear as a raccoon. Use black rings around the white eyes and a heart-shaped black nose toward the tip of the handprint heart.