Homemade toys have one advantage a shop-bought one never will: the child already played once while making it. And the materials are sitting in your recycling, cardboard tubes, bottles, a shoebox, an odd sock. Before starting, three rules apply to everything: blunt-tipped scissors for children, difficult cuts done by an adult, and no loose small parts if a baby or a child under three is around.
Tubes and cardboard
- Explorer binoculars: two cardboard tubes glued side by side, a string to hang round the neck and paint on the outside. Five minutes to build and a whole afternoon of expeditions in the garden. Keep the string short, chest length at most, never long enough to loop around the neck.
- Marble run: tubes cut lengthways in half and taped to the wall at angles so the ball drops from one into the next. Kids test, fail and adjust the slope, free physics.
- Box maze: a shoebox lid, straws or cardboard strips glued inside to make walls, and a marble to steer through by tilting. For over-threes only, because of the marble.
- Zoom rocket: two plastic bottles cut and joined at the necks, two long strings threaded through and four handles made from broom pieces or tubes at the ends. Two children pull and the bottle shoots from side to side. Sand or tape over every cut edge.
Bottles, caps and socks
- Bowling: six plastic bottles with a finger of sand or water in the bottom and a rolled-up sock ball. Number the bottles with a marker and it becomes an adding game.
- Bottle-cap rattle: caps pierced and threaded with string onto a thick wire loop or a large clothes peg. Fasten the ends firmly, a loose cap is a small part.
- Cup-and-ball: the top half of a bottle as a funnel, string tied to the cap and a sock or crumpled paper ball at the other end. Cover the cut rim with wide tape.
- Sock puppet: an odd sock, two sewn buttons (or glued felt eyes, safer for little ones) and a scrap of felt for the tongue. With a puppet on their hand, even shy children start telling stories.
Safety rules that always apply
- Cutting is an adult job: plastic bottles and thick cardboard leave sharp edges. Cover every cut edge with wide tape.
- The tube test: if a piece fits through a toilet roll tube, it is too small for under-threes.
- Non-toxic glue and paint: check the label and work on a washable surface near the sink.
- Always short string: any long cord on a small child's toy is a tangling risk.
After the workshop, when hands are tired of gluing, you can wind down travelling through the Magical Garden with Pigúiça, the blue-eyed husky from Dogavios, her free game opens in the browser, with nothing to install and no ads in the way.
