Your Child Can Build "Fort Macaroni"

Fort Macaroni is something a child can make with uncooked macaroni of various types. Made to a sufficiently large scale, as I am recommending here, kids can use it with plastic toy cowboys bought by the bag at a local toy store. The exercise will help younger kids develop dexterity, patience and planning skills. Naturally, you can assist to whatever degree you wish.

Planning Fort Macaroni

Let's consider Fort Macaroni as being a simple square structure with wooden log walls enclosing an open parade ground. The fort includes a main gate, a parapet running around the walls from atop which soldiers can fire over the walls, with a long barracks building against the back wall and a small guardhouse next to the entrance.

For materials, you'll need uncooked mostaccioli, rigatoni, and elbow macaroni, white glue, scissors, and small paintbrushes, and paints. Boxes will provide the skeletal structures for buildings and walls. Depending on the age of the child, you may want to do the cutting.

Walls First

Disassemble a pasteboard box for the walls. This cardboard should be sturdy enough to resist buckling when glued macaroni is attached. Cut the pasteboard to pieces of about 6" by 12". The front wall should have a 3" or 4" piece clipped out neatly for the gate around the middle of the length.

Neatly glue horizontal rows of mostaccioli to the walls to represent the logs stacked atop each other. Leave a couple rows at the top undone, allow to dry, then cut out 1" to 2" wide strips of pasteboard and glue them to the topmost row of mostaccioli so they are sticking out on the inside wall, creating parapets. Add a couple more rows of mostaccioli to finish the inside wall. You can use a cover the very top of the cardboard with a line of mostaccioli, as well.

Keep in mind, the barracks building for the back wall will serve as parapet so the back wall parapet may either be dropped entirely, or short pieces added which will attach to or overlap the completed barracks building rooftop.

This will take time, but when done, allow this side to dry thoroughly, then do the other side. Being the outer wall, no parapets will be needed.

Barracks Building and Headquarters

While this dries, get out a small box or carton. The size depends on the size of the walls. Ideally, keeping to the 6" wall height we've established, the box should be no more than 5" high, but you need not be precise. It could be higher than the wall, in fact, as long as it presents a flat roof. Cut an opening for the door. Don't throw the clipped piece away. Instead, hinge it with a piece of cloth glued on the inside so the door can be pushed open with fingertip. Begin layering mostaccioli logs on all four walls of the box, allowing time for the glue to dry as you go along. This will be the barracks building.

For the roof, make this flat so it can serve as part of the parapet. Needed is a piece of pasteboard to fit atop the cabin with very little overlap. Spread a thin layer of glue on one side of the pasteboard, then sprinkle clean sand on it, let set for a few minutes, then tilt the pasteboard, and blow the loose sand off. Now attach to the top of the barracks building with dabs of glue.

Corral

For the horse corral inside the courtyard, glue straight macaroni stalks to fence posts made from rigatoni. Leave an opening for the gate opening into the courtyard.

Guardhouse

Use a smaller box for the guardhouse to be placed inside the gate and construct it as was done with the barracks building.

Ladders

Create several ladders for the different corners of the wall with any of a variety of materials. Use macaroni stalks with shortened toothpicks for steps. But don't feel limited by the macaroni theme. Other materials can be used, here and in other stages of construction, such as pipe stems, ice cream sticks, and so on. It all depends on how sturdy the fort and it's various elements must be.

Main Gate

In fact, although a few glued-together macaroni stalks can be used for gate posts or rigatoni stacked and glued together with a crosspiece of an ice cream stick (on which the name of the fort is printed with a marker), you may prefer something more solid for this part of the structure, such as two gateposts made from overlapping ice cream sticks glued together.

A blob of modeling clay will give your gateposts a firm foundation although you can simply glue the posts to the walls flanking the gate opening.

More

For additional refinements, small American flags to scale are available as party favors at the store where you buy such items. A blob of modeling clay atop the barrack building could serve as a cradle for a cannon barrel created from pencil stubs that have been squared off at the end and painted black. Another could be mounted on a clay mound created in towards one of the open side walls in the courtyard, so as to keep it out of the way of things in the rest of the yard. You can even provide cactus outside the fort with mostaccioli or rigatoni pieces as the base and branches of elbow macaroni attached. A blob of clay will help them stand upright. The child can also clip rough chunks of sponge, dip in green paint and squeeze out excess, let dry, and use for foliage.

Paint the fort to taste, but leave the sandy barracks building roof alone, and Fort Macaroni is ready for inspection. If only for display by the proud child, it shouldn't need more work. But if he or she wants to play with it using toy cowboys, keep plenty of glue handy along with replacement pieces and be ready to help out.