cardboard Archives - JDaniel4s Mom

Cardboard Box Football or Soccer Themed Foosball Table

June 18, 2018 By Deirdre

Your kids will have fun creating their own football or soccer themed foosball table out of a cardboard box. After creating the playing field, they can decorate the player printable anyway they like. The players were created so that children could make them a boy or girl. They can make the player have any skin color and any type of hair.

Making the Foosball Table

Supplies

Large Cardboard Cereal Box
Scissors
Hole Punch
Ruler
Pencil
Green Acrylic Paint
White Acrylic Paint or White Copy Paper
Long Straws
Players for the Cardboard Box Football or Soccer Themed Foosball Table
Cardboard Drink Sleeves (We got ours at a big name coffee spot.)

Directions for Building the Foosball Table

Working with the Cereal Box

Younger children may need to have you cut out the bottom section of a large cereal box. It will need to be about 3 inches tall.

Then a square of cardboard will need to be cut out off each end. The opening will be about 1 1/2 inches tall and 2 inches long. This will be the area the ball will use to leave the foosball table.

Finally, holes will need to punch 2 inches away for the corner of each box on both sides of the box. You can place the holes closer to the ends if you like.

Painting the Foosball Table

Once the foosball table box has been created, it is time to paint the inside of the box green. You can paint it a grassy color of green like we did or a darker color if you like. Then you will need to paint on a white center line or glue on a small white rectangle.

Some cardboard seems to absorb paint. We have found that acrylic paint works well on cardboard and washable paint does not.

Adding the Players and the Handles

You will need to start by cutting out cardboard rectangles out of the coffee sleeves. You will out need to cut them out lengthwise. Each rectangle needs to be about 3 inches tall and 1 inch wide.

Then you can slip each of the rectangles onto a long straw. You can place a little glue at the top and bottom of each sleeve to hold it in place.

You will then slip the straws into the holes on each side of the box.

Next, you will need to decorate two players. You can make the players boys or girls. They can have long hair or short. They can wear generic soccer uniforms or represent a particular team.

When the players are done, you can glue them to the cardboard rectangles.

Playing with the Foosball Table

Your children will need a small rubber or foil ball to play soccer or football with. They will need to place the ball in front of one of the players and have it the swing into the ball to get the game started. Children can take turns with who gets to kick the ball first.

Next children can slide the straws to the left or right to block the ball. They can also twist their straw to get their player to kick the ball.

If you like this activity, here are some more you will like:

STEM Activities-How to Make a Balloon Boat

How Long will a LEGO Boat Float?

Olympic Shot Put Catapult

LEGO Man Sink and Float

Eclipse Viewer – Camera Obscura Made From a Cereal Box

June 21, 2017 By Deirdre

Earlier in the week, I showed you how to make a pinhole camera with an oatmeal container and a STEAM solar eclipse paper plate craft. If you have young children, it is a little bit easier to make then the camera obscura it. Your children will probably notice that the cardboard is thicker on the oatmeal container. The cardboard on the camera obscura is a little thinner and may need some re-enforcement.

Why am I sharing how to make the camera obscura with you if is tricky? Well, it gives your children the opportunity to plan the best way to add support to their boxes.

Creating the Camera Obscura

Supplies

Cereal Boxes (Small boxes are easier to work with.)
Bag from Inside the Cereal Box
Scissors
Clear Packing Tape
Small nail or pin
Foil
Glue
Support Materials (Chopsticks, Straws, Strips of Cardboard, Toothpicks)
Ruler
Pencil

Putting the Camera Obscura Together

Making the Viewing Screen

You will need to trace the bottom of the cereal box onto the bag from inside the box. Then you will need to cut out the rectangle. Next, you will glue it to the bottom of the inside of the box. You have just created your camera obscura screen.

Getting the Flaps Ready

Now it is time to create the projector. You will need to make two partial cuts from either end of the in the top flap. You don’t want to cut it into even thirds. The middle section should be two or three times bigger than the side sections.

Then will cut the two outside sections away from the box. They will be your viewing sections.

Adding Support

Before work on the viewing sections, you may need to add corner supports to your box. If your cereal boxes lean or squish down when you try holding the box with both hands, you can tape straws or another tall object into the corners on the inside of your box. It will make your camera obscura box much easier to hold.

Finishing The View Area

The side section on the left will be left alone. You don’t have to do anything to that area.

Next, you will need to close the flaps in the center section. You can permanently seal this section with clear tape if you like.

Finally, you cut out a piece of foil a little bigger than the right-hand section. Before you attach the foil to the box, you will need to place a small hole in the center of it. Then you can attach it to the right-hand section with tape.

Using the Camera Obscura

You will need to hold the camera obscura so the sun is shining through the hole. That means the sun will be behind you.

You will look into the left-hand section to view the sun.

More Eclipse Activities

Total Eclipse Painted Plates

How to Make an Oatmeal Container Pinhole Camera

Pinhole Activities (You will need to click on translate for this page, but it is worth it.)

DIY Cardboard Kids’ Washing Machine

March 26, 2017 By Deirdre

You can easily put together this DIY cardboard kid’s washing machine together. When you have created it, they can use it for pretend play or as a part of exploring a learning concept. We created it to be used in a Kuffle Bunny color exploration activity.

How to Put the DIY Cardboard Kids’ Washing Machine Together

Building Supplies

Three Sides of a Cardboard Box
Black Tape
Scissors
White Paper
Markers
2 Clear Plastic Lids
Brass Fasteners
Lid from a Food Pouch or Another Lid
Pipecleaner
Square Shaped Object
Small Plate
Small Laundry Basket
Jar Lid
Black Construction Paper

Directions for Creating the DIY Cardboard Washing Machine

Creating the Door and Window

You will start by tracing the top, bottom and right side of a square object onto the center panel of the box. This square will be the door of the washing machine.

Then you will trace the circular object in the center of the door. This will become the window for your DIY cardboard washing machine.

Finally, it is time to cut out the door and the window. We used scissors to do the cutting. If you have an X-Acto knife available, you can use that instead.

Creating the Dials

You will then trace the jar lid onto white paper that is folded in half. When you cut it out, you will have two white circles. You will need to create a border along the edge of each of the circles with a marker. Then you will draw lines dividing each of the circles into thirds.

One circle will have the words warm, cold, and hot written in one of its sections. The other circle will have the words delicate, perm press, and regular written in its thirds. Then the circles can be glued in the space under the door. Finally, put a hole through the center of your paper dials.

After placing a hole in the circle of the plastic lids, you can put a brass fastener through it. Then you can attach it to the washer through the center of each of your circles to the box. You will want the sides of the lid facing up so, your children can turn the lid.

Finally cut out two small black arrows and attach them to each of the lids. Your children can use it to select the water temperature and wash cycle.

Adding the Door Knob

After creating two holes in the door, attach the food pouch lid to the door with pipe cleaners. Twist the pipe cleaners together behind the door.

Adding the Laundry Basket

After creating a small hole to each of the outside sections of the box, thread a pipe cleaner through them. Wrap the ends of the pipe cleaner through the sides of the laundry basket to hold it in place.

If you like this DIY cardboard washing machine, here are some more cardboard creations:

Cardboard Campfire

Counting Paws

STEM Engineering Design Process Building a Basketball Hoop

Homemade Giant Tangrams from a Pizza Box

Cardboard Craft -Crafting a Campfire to Read By

February 14, 2017 By Deirdre

Crafting a Campfire to Read By- Painting the Fire Flames on Cardboard

Whether you are camping in the woods or camping in your backyard, it is nice to have a fire to sit down by. Recently my son and a friend help me craft a campfire to read by and enjoy in our backyard. Once this cardboard craft was finished, they brought out a favorite dinosaur book to explore.

The campfire is made of three pieces of cardboard cut out of a cardboard box. The pieces were cut out to resemble a log on the bottom and flames on the top. Slots were cut into the cardboard pieces so that they could be put together to make a three-dimensional fire.

Crafting a Campfire to Read By- Painting the Fire

Black, brown and red paint were set out for the boys to paint the cardboard with. They were also given sponge and bristle paintbrushes to paint with.

Crafting a Campfire to Read By- Painting the Fire Flames

I suggested that they use the sponge brushes for the log section and the bristle brushes for the flames, but they ended up using both for both sections. They loved getting to see the different types of strokes they could make with each brush. Layering the brown and black paint on the logs was also fun. The logs ended up looking close to the real thing.

Once the paint was dry, the boys made dabs of paint with a bingo marker onto the flame section of the cardboard pieces. Then we used the paintbrushes to smooth out the dabs of orange paint. We all liked the texture that the orange paint added to the flames.

Later when the paint was completely dry I slipped the cardboard pieces together. The boys and I decided it really looked like a campfire.

As I mentioned earlier campfires are great to read by. We also found this campfire was great to sing by and tell tall tales around. The best part about crafting a campfire it that you can take it apart and store it until the next time you want a campfire to read by.

Engineering for Kids- Pool Noodle Airplanes

June 26, 2015 By Deirdre

Engineering for Kids How to Build Pool Noodle Airplanes

We have a lot of pool noodle sections leftover from making a pool noodle math game and a batting tee for the backyard. It was decided that we could use two of the longer pieces to do an engineering for kids project that involved building airplanes. In many ways it was a STEM ( Science, technology, engineering and math) experiment. Various styles of wings, tails, and nose cones were put out or created. Two types of fuselages were made available. The goal was to create a plane that could fly far.

Here is what was done to get ready for the engineering activity for kids:

Engineering for Kids How to Build Pool Noodle Airplanes

There were two fuselages cut made of pool noodles. One pool noodle was left with straight areas in the front and back. One pool noodle it was decided needed to have a slant in the front and a straight back.

Slots were cut on both sides of the pool noodle so triangular shaped wings could be inserted. A small slit was cut in the top of the back section of the pool noodle so cardboard tails could be placed in them if it was decided they needed to be.

Two wings were cut out for the planes. One wing was made of cardboard from a cardboard box. One wing was cut out of meat tray. Extra meat trays were set out for additional wings to be created if these wings didn’t work as we hoped they would.

The front and back of any Easter egg were dug out of Easter storage (a plastic bag in the closet). They would be optional nose cones for the plane.

Pennies were put out to add more weight to the front of the plane inside the egg section.

Goal of the engineering for kids activity

The activity or engineering experiment was to discover what combination of fuselage, wings and additional items would allow the plane to fly the farthest. Engineering for Kids How to Build Pool Noodle Airplanes

Two plane ideas could be tested out at a time due to the fact that we had two sets of wings and fuselages.

Engineering for Kids How to Build Pool Noodle Airplanes

We really thought that the plane body with the angled front would go the farthest. We tried flying it with the angel slanting down and slanting up. We tried flying it with both sections of eggs and with various numbers of pennies. A tail was added and later removed. This plane just didn’t fly very far. It tended to loop a little.

Engineering for Kids How to Build Pool Noodle Airplanes

The plane with straight body went the farthest. When it had the cardboard wings inserted it went farther than it did with the meat tray wings. It really didn’t seem to matter what section of the plastic Easter egg was used. It flew almost the same distance with either one. Placing pennies in the nose cone really helped. My son found out that 4 pennies helped it to fly the best.

I am participating in a fun series this week with awesomely talented bloggers called Craft Closet Boredom Busters. Each day I will be sharing a fun activity you can do with your children along with links to the other bloggers’ ideas!

Here are some of their great activities:

Sparkly Felt Fish from Toddler Approved

Craft Stick Marble Run from Frugal Fun for Boys

Giant Pool Noodle Alphabet Beads from The Educator’s Spin on It

Craft Closet Boredom Busters for Kids- How to Make a Minion Craft Stick Puzzle

If you do this engineering for kids project with pool noodles, please share a picture of it with me on Facebook.

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Cool Experiments With Friction For Kids

April 7, 2015 By Deirdre

Friction is the resistance that one surface or object encounters when moving over another according to a dictionary definition I read. As a part of the the A-Z Science Experiments for Kids series hosted by Frogs and Snails and Puppy Dog Tails, my son and I conducted a series of cool experiments that explored friction. We used items we found around the house to create four different roadways for one of my son’s toy cars to travel on. Each cardboard road needed to have something placed on it that would add resistance. The objects we placed on the roads had to slow the car down, but not keep it from moving forward totally.

The link below is an affiliate link.

We ended up placing sandpaper, Wikki Stixs, short thumb tacks, and bubble wrap on our roads. If you don’t have any of these items available you might try using one of the following:

small grains of sand sprinkled on glue
crushed Styrofoam peanuts or cup bits
staples stapled into the cardboard
glitter sprinkled on glue
rubber band wrapped around the cardboard road’s width
bread tags glued to the cardboard

Procedures For Conducting These Cool Experiments With Friction

Create A Hypothesis

Start by asking your children to create a hypothesis as to which road will be the easiest for the car to travel on. You can explain that a hypothesis is like a prediction or guess. Children can record their hypothesis on a piece of paper individually or you can record everyone’s hypothesis on a chart. Young children record their own guess or hypothesis by drawing the road they think will be easiest to travel on rather than write it out in words.

Conducting the Cool Experiments

Getting Started

I did these cool experiments with my son at home. We just needed one car and one set of roads. If you are going to have more than one child conduct these cool experiments, you may want to have them try one of procedures below.

Here are some ways to do these cool experiments with multiple children:

They could each test to one road each in a small group.
They could rotate the roads so each child could test out each road. You will probably want to have one car per child if you experiment this way.
You could select a few students to test out one of the roads for the whole group.
You could put the roads and a car in the center that your children can visit.

Getting the Car Moving

At my house the car was given a big push from behind to give it momentum while the car was on the beginning of the road. (A tap just didn’t work.) You may decide that the car should start off the road at a distance or just off the road. It really doesn’t matter where you start it as long as you are consistent with your starting place for all the roads.

Noting Where The Car Stops

You can mark where the car stops with a paper clip if you like. You can someone hold the place where it stopped with their fingers. We chose not to mark the cars stopping spot with a pencil or crayon. (I wanted to be able to use the roads again.) If the car rolls off the road, you may want to use a ruler to measure how far it has gone off the road.

Reviewing Your Results

While getting to car to travel across the roads was fun, the reason we did it was to learn about friction. After conducting the experiments it is now time to talk about what materials made it hardest to move along the road. We talked about the attributes of each material and how they to created a little bit of friction or a lot.

It was interesting to go back and look at our predictions. One of the predictions was off. The others were correct. I wonder if your children will assume that one of the materials will be hard to travel on and find it was much easier than they thought.

Please stop by and check out all the other A to Z of Science Experiments for kids. There is a complete list of them on Frogs and Snails and Puppy Dog Tails.

{Homemade Giant Tangrams} Exploring Tangrams

January 14, 2014 By Deirdre

Homemade Giant Tangrams from a Pizza Box

I recently served store bought pizza to my family that came in a huge cardboard box and decided the box would be great for making homemade giant tangrams. Although the bottom of the box wasn’t a perfect square shape, I decided to try to cut out the tangram shapes without trimming it down to a square. Some of the shapes ended up a little wonky and did end up being trimmed down. All in all the shapes in the tangram are not perfect, but worked out well for building some really cool tangram designs I found online.

We are going to keep this set, but I may try to make another set using a ruler to actually make sure each piece is just right. I did use a ruler to draw lines for each shape before I cut it out of the giant square. I didn’t paint or color each of the tangram pieces either. Instead, I opted to leave them brownish cardboard colored. It might be fun to have JDaniel have me paint another set of them. Colored shapes seem to help the designs pop out a little more.

(The link below is an affiliate link that will take you to Amazon.com.)

JDaniel hasn’t been big on exploring tangrams. The fact that these are giant seemed to make them interesting and more fun. There is just something wonderful about learning tools being super-sized. I think selecting a pattern that he might enjoy helped too. There are hundreds of different design patterns available online and in books. Grandfather Tang’s Story (Dragonfly Books) is a book that I have used in the past with students. It would be just wonderful to read the book and create the tangram designs that it shares in its illustrations.

What designs did JDaniel like the best?

Homemade Giant Tangrams from a Pizza Box- Sunrise Pattern

We both really liked this sunrise design. I think it is a sunrise. I guess it could be a sunset design too.

Homemade Giant Tangrams from a Pizza Box- Rocket Pattern

JDaniel has always liked rockets and space. Creating a rocket design was right up his interest alley. It was a little challenging to fit the rocket on the table. The homemade giant tangrams took up most of the length of the table. We may have to move to the floor to make long tangram designs in the future.

Do you have a favorite tangram pattern, design or book?

Deirdre Smith writes/owns JDaniel4’s Mom. After twenty years as an elementary school and technology resource teacher in Northern Virginia, she became a stay at home mom in upstate South Carolina. Her blog features ways she and her 5-year-old are exploring learning, crafting, creating healthy meals and living life to its fullest. Deirdre can also be found on twitter as @jdaniel4smom and on her blog’s FB page. You can also check her out on Google+.

5 Little Firecrackers Craft and Song

December 29, 2013 By Deirdre

Five Little Firecrackers Craft and Song - This fine motor activity would be great to do for any patriotic holiday like the 4th of July. Kids can weave their own designs on the cardboard fire cracker they paint.

5 Little Firecrackers craft and song is the latest five little holiday song and craft we have done for the blog. It all started with JDaniel deciding he loved the book The Five Little Pumpkins. Since then we have explored the songs the Five Little Turkeys and Five Little Christmas Trees. I am going to be on the look out for more five little songs to share with you and him in the next year.Just as with the other five little songs we did a craft to help illustrate the song. This time we did a pipe cleaner lacing activity and craft.

Five long rectangles were cut out of the top of a pizza box. Then the cardboard rectangles were colored with a red marker and a red metallic crayon. It is a little hard to see that the firecracker’s surface sparkle a little in the picture above, but in real life it does sparkle.

Once the firecrackers were colored, random holes were punched into them. As you may remember JDaniel loves using the hole punch. I think lots of kids do. It is a great fine motor tool so when we have the opportunity pull it out and create with it. If you want your children to thread or weave in a particular pattern, you may want to punch the holes yourself. Our holes were really random.

When the holes had been punched, it was time to weave sparkly gold pipe cleaners through the holes. The weaving was done randomly from the top of the firecracker to the bottom. A little of the pipe cleaner was left at the top so the firecracker would have a wick.

With all the firecrackers ready, we started singing and almost chanting the song. It was so much fun!

Here is the Five Little Fireworks Song:

5 little fireworks standing in a row5 little fireworks standing in a row5 little fireworks standing in a rowAnd if 1 little firework decides its time to goWhoosh!There’ll be 4 little fireworks standing in a row3……….. 2 ……… 15 Shiny Rockets in the sky5 Shiny Rockets in the skyWatch them flying oh so high!If one shiny rocket goes BANG! BANG! BANG!There’ll be 4 shiny rockets in the sky3…….2……..1

If you like this patriotic activity, here are some more your children will enjoy.

Fine Motor Weaving Patriotic Colors
Water Gun Fireworks Painting
Bald Eagle Craft and Science Experiment
Grandma’s Garbage Truck and Parade Float
Musical Star Shaker American Flag Mobile
Chalk and Bow Fireworks Craft
Patriotic Lantern
Fireworks Straw Painting

Do you have a five little something song that I should share? If you do, please leave the name of it in a comment below.

Read.Explore.Learn- Bunnies

April 29, 2011 By Deirdre

Welcome to Read. Explore. Learn! This meme was designed to be a place for you to share the learning opportunities, crafts, field trips, and other activities you have done this week that tie-in to children’s books. I look forward to seeing the ways you have learned with and explored books.

Steps:

Link your activity below.

Please place the Read.Explore.Learn. badge on your post or create a link back to this meme.

<center><a href=”http://www.jdaniel4smom.com/”><img alt=”Shibley Smiles” src=”http://69.195.124.116/~jdanielf/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/ReadExploreLearn.jpg” alt=”jdaniel4smom” width=”150″ height=”150″ /></a></center>

Please try to visit at least three of the other people that have placed links below and leave a comment. I will visit each of you and leave a kind comment.

If you are not linking up an activity and are just visiting, please try to stop by a few of the links below.

My Book Tie-Ins of the Week:

Suki The Very Loud Bunny by Carmela and Steven D’Amico is a tale about a rabbit that lives outside the box. Suki is loud and full of adventure. She wakes up early each morning and greets the world around her with ear-splitting cries of “Good Morning”. She wants to look beyond her home to visit the wide world. When she does, she gets lost and has to use her loud voice to call for her mother.

Suki learns lessons as she explores the world that changes her life, but not her personality.

Little Bunny in Little Bunny’s Sleepless Night finds he wants to explore the world beyond his own too. He is lonely sleeping in his house all by himself. Little Bunny decides sleeping at a friend’s house would be better. He tries owl’s house. Owl stays awake reading at night. He tries skunk’s house. Skunk forgets he is there and sprays him when he gets scared at night. Each of his friend’s houses isn’t right for him. Finally, he realizes that home is where he needs to be after all.

What did we do?

Building Structures and Roads with Cardboard

JDaniel asked me to cut cardboard rectangles out from some cardboard for a project. He hadn’t decided on the project, but he wanted to do one.

I showed him how to build a lean-to with the rectangles and he had fun building one for his bunny.