Built once · a shoebox, an egg box, two tins · 8 activities
Make It Yourself
Eight things you make in an evening out of what is already in the house, and then use for years.
Every one of these is an adult job done once. The counting grid is twelve numerals written in the bottom of an egg box and takes five minutes. A slot in a tub lid plus twelve discs drawn round a mug is about fifteen. The paper clock and the post office box are half an hour each, most of it spent on the cards rather than the box. The weighted pods are the long one at about forty five minutes, plus a night for the glue to dry.
Three of them need a craft knife and one careful minute. Cut a posting slot a centimetre longer than the widest disc and about three millimetres taller than the thickest, so the disc has to be turned rather than dropped through. Post office slots want a clean 8 cm by 8 mm. Then fold masking tape over every cut edge, because cut card and cut plastic both leave a lip and these are activities where fingers go right up to the slot.
Two things decide whether a build survives. The card: single cereal box tears through at the holes after about twenty passes and bows inward as soon as a warp goes tight, so double it, glue it and leave it flat under a book overnight, or use one layer of shoebox card. And the fixing: a split pin lets the clock hands turn and then stay where they were put, which is the entire activity, so glue and tape kill it outright. The tin stilts take four nail holes and about four minutes, and the rope gets measured against the child rather than the tin: held at waist height with a foot on the tin, each rope should be just taut.
Where it lives afterwards decides whether it gets used. A half-woven loom on a shelf gets picked up and one in a drawer does not. The stilts live by the back door, the cards live in a tin or an envelope, and the egg box folds its own lid down over the beans and goes on a shelf.
The eight
Ordered by the age they suit best. The setup time on each line is the build, and the play time is what you get back every time afterwards.
- Cardboard Slotting and Coin Drop Your child turns a disc until it lines up with the slot, posts it, and listens for it landing. 15 min, once · 5 to 10 min · household only
- Cardboard Post Office and Sound Drop Your child holds a picture card, says the sound its word starts with, and posts it through the slot marked with that letter. 15 min, once · 10 to 20 min · household only
- Button Sewing Card Your child sews real buttons onto a punched card with a shoelace, up through one hole and down through the other, until the card is covered in buttons. 15 min, once · 10 to 20 min · household only
- Egg Carton Counting Grid Your child reads the number written in the bottom of an egg carton cup and drops in exactly that many beans, one at a time, twelve cups in a row. 15 min, once · 10 to 20 min · household only
- Weighted Pod Sorting Your child picks up two pots that look exactly alike, decides which one is heavier, and keeps going until all ten are in pairs. 15 min, once · 5 to 10 min · household only
- Clock Face and Hands Match Your child sets the hands on a paper clock to match a card, and the card says what happens at that time in his own day. 15 min, once · 10 to 20 min · household only
- Bucket Stilts Balance Track Your child stands on two upturned tins, holds a rope in each hand to keep them under her feet, and walks a taped line across the garden. 15 min, once · 10 to 20 min · household only
- Cardboard Loom Yarn Weaving Your child weaves a small square of cloth on a loom cut from a cereal box, over four or five sittings, and it takes as long as it takes. 15 min, once · 20 min or more · household only
Everything here is made from what was already in the house. The rest of the no-cost library needs no building at all.