Putting recycled materials to good use is satisfying and children are experts at transforming readily available free resources into enchanting creations. These suggestions for discarded cardboard tubes should provide a launch pad for further exciting ideas.
Setting the scene
Ensure that children have easy access to tubes in creative or construction areas by providing a drum to house longer tubes, smaller baskets for kitchen roll tubes, and table-top boxes for tubes cut to different lengths.
Natural creations
- Make tree trunks by standing tubes in clay. Cut a slot across the top to push in fan-shaped paper or a cut-out handprint to form the top of the tree.
- Cut tubes into rings, tape them together in a row and paint them to create caterpillars and centipedes. Paint tubes brown and push in pipecleaner legs to make realistic ants.
Sparkling jewellery
- Use cut-down tubes to make bracelets. Cover them with a mixture of paint and PVA glue, and sprinkle on glitter and sequins.
- Thread tubes and decorate them for a giant necklace. (Supervise children with creations that hang round necks.)
Scientific tubes
- Tape two tubes together and add a ribbon for binoculars. Use one long tube for a telescope.
- Make windsocks, using the tube as the frame and gluing streamers of tissue to one end. Hang the sock on a high post.
Christmas fun
- Create chain decorations by cutting tubes into thin circles, splitting them apart to link them and taping them up again.
- Use tubes for Christmas crackers. Push a small gift inside and wrap them in attractive recycled paper.
- Make candle decorations from tubes glued to circular cheese-spread boxes. Insert a card flame at the top and decorate the candle with shiny materials.
Imaginative tubes
- Glue streamers to the end of a tube and wave while dancing.
- Tape plastic over the end of a tube, fill it with sand or rice and tape up the top to make an effective shaker for accompanying music.
- Create tube sculptures by gluing them together at different angles.
