Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Recycle with kids- making toy kitchen out of cardboard box.

It was a rainy day , and the girls were bored stiff . I just thought to throw out the vacuum cleaner box , when it hit me -this is what they can occupy themself very nicely.
So we took:
the cardboard box
plastic glue
plastic bowl for the sink
botlle caps from the plastic bottles, for the oven and faucet knobs
spray bottle for the faucet.
glue gun
wrapping paper of different colours, whatever we had at hand
glue tape 
4 CD's for the stove

First we glued the box , so it will not fall apart very soon (even though i'm not optimistic about the kitchen's chances of survival more than a month). We also glued together 2 pieces of cardboard and glued it to the box for "kitchen wall".
Then i made a hole for the sink,  measured it to fit the plastic bowl.



We covered the whole thing with different wrapping papers.

I cut out the oven door , and a little window in that door. Later on , i cut and glued some tranparent  filing plastic bag , to create a fill of glass window of the oven.
Faucet was a different problem,we decided to use a spray botlle for that , but  the Baby sister loved it immediately and decided that it's too good a thing to waste it on some toy kitchen. So , after i hot glued  the top part to the spray bottle to the cardnboar tube, covered with some nice paper , she came over and pulled it out. After gluing it for three times in a row i came out with the idea- i made the hole for the faucet a bit bigger and screwed it together with the spray bottle itself on the inside of the box. So now,  even though the faucet wasn't tall and pretty , as the Princess wanted, but  the Baby sister couldn't tear it anymore, not that she didn't tried.
This is the tap with a nice cardboard roll under it, lasted three seconds , till baby teared it out.
For the stove we took 4 CD's , and glued then on top , and on them i glued some circles cut out of black plastic bag. Princess had drawn on them grids with the permanent pen , that is used to write on CD's.

For the knobs we used the plastic bottles caps, for the oven handle , some large beads. I fastened it together with a wire, using big beads on each side, so that the wire won't come out on either side.


And , of course , the little chefs need aprons and towels. So i made two frilled aprons for each cook, and cut some fabric for towels and sewn a ribbon , so it's possible to hang it on the hooks, tha i glued for that purpose.  The little picture that is on the back wall of this kitchen is the piece of art , that my Princess made.
This is how it looks after a week of heavy use.

Apron1



Apron2

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