Maker Monday: Let’s try building with cardboard

The Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh offered lots of digital programming for kids during the pandemic. Among their offerings was a series of “Let’s Try” videos showing kids how to do fun, simple maker projects. In partnership with our friends at the Children’s Museum, we love sharing these videos as part of our Maker Monday series.

Today’s video offers creative fun and imagination inspiration for little kids with materials you likely have around the house. Let’s try building with cardboard!

A note to kid makers: Please work with a parent or caregiver on every project and always be very careful when using tools of any kind.

Maker Monday materials you’ll need:

• Cardboard (anything you have around the house will do!)
• Safe scissors
• Tape

Instructions for great ways to build with cardboard:

• Take a piece of cardboard and bend around its natural creases to create rounded shapes.
• Use scissors to cut slots into pieces of cardboard that other pieces of cardboard could fit into.
• Snip a corner off one piece of cardboard, then use tape to attach it to a bent piece of cardboard to create a sturdy structure.
• Cut a slot into a folded piece of cardboard along the fold, then snip off parts of another piece of cardboard to create a tab. Insert the tab into the slot to connect the two pieces.
• Cut out four similarly sized triangles. Tape them together on one side of the cardboard pieces. Use one last piece of tape to finish the structure.
• Combine all these ways of crafting to build whatever you can dream up!

See it all on this video (and check out other Maker Monday projects right here!):

Want more at-home fun creating cool stuff and making beautiful things? Check out more Maker Monday projects right here. Do you have an idea for a Maker Monday craft project? If so, please share it with Kidsburgh! Send your maker activity ideas to info@kidsburgh.org.