Fun with cardboard

Don’t throw away those old boxes or corrugated cardboard packing sheets. Turn them into toys.

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Playtime doesn’t have to be about expensive toys. Keep your kids occupied during the school holidays with bits of old cardboard. Dig out the picture books for inspiration, hand your kids some recycled cardboard, sticky tape and colour pens or pencils, and let them get to work.

You can make just about anything with cardboard. Cars, trains, castles, huts, crawl-through tunnels, rockets… your creativity is limited only by your imagination.

Turn cardboard boxes into the best set of wheels in the neighbourhood, or build a marble course with cardboard tubes.

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Old egg trays make great turbine exhausts for planes (see images), and small boxes make great trailers for trucks.

Look at old car or truck magazines for inspiration, as well as children’s books. Head to your local library to find more inspiration.

You don’t have to be an engineer to make the wheels on your cardboard car and truck turn. You can create this very basic model to make the axle spin.

Insert bamboo skewers through the corrugated cardboard from one side to the other.

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Make sure the skewer, or ‘axle’, sticks out the same amount on each side. You may need to cut the skewer if it’s too long.

Poke the tips of the skewers through your ‘wheels’, place some poster putty over the tips, then stick the ‘hubcaps’ on top of the putty.

For easier turning, and to protect the cardboard from tearing, you can insert the skewers into straws and insert these through the cardboard.

Fun!