Material shelf · cereal boxes, shoeboxes and paper · 10 activities
Paper and Cardboard
Everything in the library that is made out of card you already have in the recycling: cereal box sides, shoeboxes, corrugated packaging and ordinary printer paper.
Three kinds of card do all ten of these. A cereal box side is thin and cuts clean, so it becomes picture cards, sequence cards and shape outlines. Shoebox card is stiff enough to take a pull, which is what a sewing card and a loom need. Corrugated packaging is the thick one, and it is what discs and a hole board get cut from.
The trick worth knowing is doubling. Two layers of cereal box glued together and left flat under a book overnight behave like shoebox card, which is why the sewing card and the cardboard loom both ask for it. A single layer tears through at the holes after about twenty passes, and it bows inward the moment a warp goes tight.
Folding wants the opposite thing. Ordinary 80 gsm printer paper takes a sharp crease and holds it, which is the whole of paper folding. Card springs back open, so nothing stays folded, and tissue and newsprint tear along the crease on the second fold. Fifteen centimetres square is the size a five year old can hold two corners of at once.
Every slot on this shelf is one adult minute with a craft knife. Cut it 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, then fold masking tape over each cut edge. Cut card and cut plastic both leave a lip, and these are activities where fingers go right up to the slot.
The ten
Ordered by the age they suit best. Each line gives the setup time, the play time and whether anything has to be bought.
- 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
- Posting and Slotting Your child pushes a plastic lid through a slot cut in a tub, hears it land, and then takes the tub lid off and finds it again. 2 min · 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
- Shape Shadow Match Your child stands a solid shape in a beam of light and works out which of the outlines traced on the paper its shadow belongs to. 2 min · 10 to 20 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
- Paper Folding Precision Challenge Your child folds a square of paper corner to corner, presses the crease with a thumbnail, and finds out four folds later whether the first one was straight. no setup · 10 to 20 min · household only
- Maze Blueprint Mapping Your child tapes a maze onto the floor and then draws it on paper as a plan, or draws the plan first and builds to it. 2 min · 20 min or more · household only
- Plant Care and Growth Measuring Your child grows a bean from a dried one in the cupboard, waters it on a schedule that is hers, and cuts a paper strip to its height every morning. 2 min · 5 min a day, for weeks · 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
Five of these are built once and then live in a tin or on a shelf. Make It Yourself collects those, with what each build involves.