Home » Art and Craft » Junk models » Page 6

Junk model ideas

by 10 Comments

Are you celebrating Earth Day with your children this Friday 22nd April 2011? For environmentally-friendly, creative play we love to make junk models. We love using items from our craft box which otherwise would be thrown away – turning them into toys and extending the life of the materials.

Here’s a showcase of our favourite upcycled junk models. If you have any more ideas you can share with us, please leave a link in the comments or on our Facebook page – we’re always looking for new inspiration and have a stack of boxes ready to go!
Recently Updated2

A riding stables created from the contents of our making box

 

A dragon made from egg boxes

 

A double decker bus from a shoe box

 

A cardboard box ride on train

 

make a dinosaur land
A dinosaur world from a cardboard box

carnival of junk play

And have a look at our the ideas shared by all our Play Academy community in our Carnival of Junk Play

happily shared with made by little hands Monday and Friday’s nature table and  preschool creations and  the resource centre and creative Friday and  for the kids Friday and  It’s Playtime and  upcycled awesome and  kids get crafty

Junk model nativity

by 13 Comments

 junk model nativity

 

This article is one of NurtureStore’s easy Christmas crafts for children and part of our Christmas activities and crafts.

 

Do you have a nativity scene your children can play with? Advent begins today and I know my girls will spend December dressing up as kings, reading Christmas story picture books and generally bursting into a round of Away In A Manger at any opportunity. 

We have a beautiful nativity scene which decorates our sitting room each year but it is too delicate for the girls to play with, so this year we decided to make a version the girls can use.  And you’ll probably guess what are figures are made of: paper rolls.

The figures were made by wrapping fabric and card around the tubes and glueing into place: a very simple design the girls can make with just a little adult help, and giving them their own nativity to play with to their hearts content.

 

 

More Christmas activities and crafts

See our full index of Christmas activities, lesson plans and crafts for even more great ideas.

Junk model horse riding stables

by 34 Comments

Recently Updated2

We’re getting ready for the Carnival of Junk Play on Friday 3rd December!

What do you think of our riding school? We have stables, jumps, a daisy filled paddock and some prize winning rosettes – and all made for free using re-cycled materials from our beloved making box. B has been off school ill this week and we needed a good ‘sitting down’ activity to keep us busy and cheer us up – and this is what we made. It was a totally spontaneous project, put together after a rummage through the junk box to see what materials we could find.

The base is made from a big piece of cardboard from a packing box, which happened to have a circular shape marked out in the centre which seemed to say ‘paddock’! The jump is made from two Smarties tubes, turned inside out,  with a wooden skewer, snapped in half and poked through the tubes to make the cross bars.

Recently Updated1

The stables are made from tissue boxes, and the one on the end which has proper stable doors is made from a teabag box. We covered them in sugar paper, held in place with sticky tape – as you know we can’t wait for glue to dry when we want to get playing. The prize winning rosettes are made from little gift bows salvaged from some presents, with a ribbon made from sugar paper.

Recently Updated3

We have a bucket with a pipe-cleaner handle, wool for straw and a biscuit tray cut up and stuck inside each stable to make a feeding trough (there’s probably a proper horsey word for that isn’t there?) The bunting is made from wool, old wrapping paper and held up on wooden skewers. And the paddock was painted with poster paint, sprinkled with a little glitter while it was still wet, and with some daisies (cut from a remnant of edging from my sewing basket) glued on.

Not all our junk models are this grand – L’s boat was very simple, but they both sum up what I love best about junk modelling:

it’s recycled, it costs nothing, it’s creative and it’s makes a toy with lots more play value to it.

see more

Want more happy handmade crafts?

Our Happy Handmade resource is bursting with colourful and imaginative crafts and DIY toys that are designed to add even more colour and creativity to your home. With easy-to-follow tutorials and free patterns and printables, you can read, make, and start playing today! See more of Happy Handmade here.

Peg dolls

by 15 Comments

We had so much fun making these peg dolls! The wooden pegs costs less than a pound for about 24 and everything else came from our making boxes, so they’re a great frugal activity – perfect for the summer holidays. What I always like about these kind of crafts is that there’s so much playing you can do with what you’ve made. You can put on a puppet show, take them for a ride on your double decker bus, let them move into your fairy garden… wherever the kids’ imaginations take them.

If you make some peg dolls, we would LOVE to see them. You can share a photo on our Facebook page.

Happily shared with and teach mama Craft Schooling Sunday

 

 

NurtureStore