What You’ll Need: pipe cleaners, sanitary paper rolls or paper towel rolls, aluminum foil, aluminum trays and dishes, miscellaneous metal objects (paper clips, washers, screws and bolts), glue, tape.
Objective: Build a metal robot. Foil food trays are a good start for the robot body. Cut down cardboard tubes for legs and head and wrap them in aluminum foil. Then use odds and ends for your robot’s features.
- Cover toilet or paper-towel roll tubes in aluminum foil. Wrap them tightly to avoid crinkles in the foil. These will be used for the Robot’s legs.
- Obtain a food tray and tape the legs to the tray. The tray is the abdomen.
- Tape pipe cleaners to the abdomen (food tray)
- Cut toilet or paper-towel roll to 1.5 or 2 inches and cover in aluminum foil. Glue a small foil dish to one end of the tube. This is the head. Attach head to opposite end that legs are attached to.
- Glue miscellaneous metal objects (paper clips, washers, buttons, bolts) to the robot to make eyes and buttons for robot.
(from page 48-49 of Make it!)
What craft projects have you created with your kids using metal or aluminum foil? Leave your responses in the comment field below by August 21st. We'll randomly choose two members to receive a free copy of Make It! from DK Publishing.
*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*
Share tips and fun ideas for families at Parenting.gather.com.
To join click here.
recommend this
email
print
link to this page
Comments: 13
My oldest son and I have made little butterflies out of tin foil, and then we would put them in the window and see how the sun's rays would make reflections.
My kids have made little animals. My daughter has made jewelry out of it, like bracelets. They can get so clever with simple household items!
Step 1: Punch holes in the edges of an aluminum foil pie pan with a nail. Help kids smooth the sharp edges of the holes with a file or hammer.
Step 2: At each hole, tie a small jingle bell to the pan with yarn or string.
What You'll Need:
Foil pie pan
Nail
File or hammer
Jingle bells
Yarn or string
Once the box is made the camera is loaded with "film". This must be in the dark, with all lights turned out, maybe in a dark closet with clothes blocking any extra light that wants to come in. We used photographic paper and put it inside the box with the emulsion toward the lens. Then the girls took the cameras outside and carefullly opened the lens cap without moving the box. The length of exposure depends on the size of the hole and the amount of light outside. This is kind of trial and error. It's good to keep records of the exposure time. (A good chance to add a bit of math to the project.)
Once inside our daughters joined me in my darkroom and we processed the negative and then once it dried we placed the negative on top of another piece of photographic paper and turned on the enlarger to expose the print. The girls were tickled to have made their own cameras and the photos were quite interesting.
I made an airplane out of foil for my daughter to play with awhile back since she got ahold of and unwrapped half a thing of foil and I couldn't get it all rolled back up.
This post is spotlighted on the Wednesday edition of Today On Gather.
You can view it here.
Congratulations!