Tips to Make Recycled Cardboard Toys

You need to save money and you want to contribute to the good of the environment. One recyclable product that inevitably fills every home is cardboard. Learn fun new ways you and your kids can recycle cardboard into fun, free toys that will entertain them for hours.

You'll find many of these activities are reminiscent of the days when you we were kids and had to use our imagination in the absence of video games and trendy new toys.

Recycled Cardboard fun - Green Skates

We spent hours as kids skating on the carpet and in the grass with cardboard skates. Whenever someone bought a new pair of shoes we took the box and, using the bottom and the lid, made ourselves a pair of skates. You may have noticed your child discovers the sliding attribute of shoe boxes on their own. Imagine the pair of skates you can make with two box bottoms.

Recycled cardboard skates are a great treat for a day at preschool or even early elementary school. Make skates when you talk about transportation, exercise, or Olympic sports like ice skating and skiing. A simple pair of skates can make the lesson memorable.

If you need additional craft options allow kids to glue used buttons or yarn to their skates to decorate them. They can be painted with non-toxic tempera paint.

Green Kids: Toddlers make cars out of recycled cardboard

The kids' show Barney popularized this recycled toy for kids, although, we did the same thing when we were kids, just not quite as fancy. Did you ever sit in a medium sized box and pretend it was a car? The same concept works for kids now. You can use non-toxic paint to add buttons and knobs, or glue on different size bottle caps for radio and A/C buttons. Decorate the outside of the car and use yarn remnants or rope remnants to make suspenders that hold the car up around your child's waist. Be sure the string is not long enough for your child to choke on.

Have fun making a recycled castle for with your princess

Anytime you have a large box, like an appliance box, there are a myriad of imaginative recycled toys to make. The first one that comes to mind is a castle. Drawing or painting will turn cardboard into the stone walls of a castle. If you want to make it a little fancier, cut out an arch shaped window on two sides. You can even draw in, or cut in, guard towers on the edge.

Your princess will love to dress in her favorite costumes. If she doesn't have princess costumes, she will fill like a princess dressed in mom's high heels, using a chiffon blouse or top for a dress, and a beautiful scarf, pinned on with hair clips. You princess will also need a magic wand, so use one of those scraps of cardboard to paint a clever looking wand. Add strips of scrap paper, cut into thin, wavy lengths to the end of the wand.

Green Kids' Classic Toy: Make a recycled cardboard spaceship

Send your little boy or girl to the moon in a spaceship made from one large cardboard appliance box, or several small boxes and some duct tape. Since duct tape is a grey-silver color, it will match the spaceship motif.

Use a small box to create a cone shape for the top of the spaceship. The spaceship can be made from one large box or several small boxes stacked, and taped, on top of one another. Make sure you have enough cardboard to fold the spaceship sides 8 times. The idea is to make an octagon, since it's almost impossible to use cardboard to make a cylinder.

Cut a peep hole near the top of the spaceship. Install plenty of buttons and gadgets using recyclable plastic pieces such as bottle tops of different sizes. Recycled metal jar caps can be glued in place to create a panel of gauges to read speed, temperature, fuel, etc. Draw gauges using a permanent marker.

Don't forget to add triangular sides to the outside of the spaceship.

Creating recycled cardboard toys for green kids

The biggest downside of using recycled cardboard to make kids' green toys is that, depending on your kid's use, they may not last long. Still, if creating these cardboard toys for imaginative play at home or preschool, keeps you from buying new products, consider it an eco-friendly contribution to the environment.

When your green recycled cardboard toy finally wears out, use it to line your mulch bin, or even a worm bed if you raise your own worms for fishing or gardening.