My daughter (7 years old) has to make a 3D castle for school. Does anyone have any ideas on how to make this? It's got to have a moat and portcullis and a chapel and dungeon, etc. (Ugh! I'm not very creative!) Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance!
My brother in law helped my sons make a castle. They started with a fairly heavy cardboard box, fairly square. If it was to tall you could cut it down, so you don't need one that is perfect cube.
They cut the top edge like the top edge of a castle. Built square tubes out of cardboard for the corner watchtowers. They cut the drawbridge on 3 sides and folded it down. They used string for the chains, so it could be raised and lowered.
They didn't do the moat, but if you have a larger box, you could set the castle into the larger shallow box, and use blue paper for the water surrounding the castle.
Duct tape or black electrical tape is good for this because it holds well, and can be used to make hinges, such as on the drawbridge. I am not sure how to go about making the dungeons -- perhaps a false floor in your box, with stairs and a trap door leading to the dungeons. You could make the floor removable so that you can see the dungeons.
This could be painted with tempra paint, or just draw stones on the outside with markers. Get some pictures of castles from children's books or off the internet to give you some ideas of how these things should look.
Pizza boxes are good to use for extra cardboard, as they are nice square pieces, flat, often with no logos, and a nice thickness of cardboard -- not too thin, not too thick.
Have fun with this, and remember that this is supposed to be your daughter's work, not just yours.
How about Sugar cubes? They stack nicely, even legos would be awsome. You can spray paint the legos so they do not look so "pre-bought". Also, if you live near a Michael's Crafts, they sell a lot of Foam products and foam sheets.
I helped my little sister a few years ago with a similar project (I'm now in my 3rd year of art school, so i have some credibility). Take empty water or pop bottles and some other empty canisters, like coffee containers or pringles cans or something. Wrap them in black or grey construction paper. gather some gravel and hot glue the stones to the bottles and containers. This makes it look like a stone castle!
Just let your kid have fun. you can look around the house for odds and ends to use. It's kinda fun. Popsicle sticks work well for constructing a drawbridge. You can make funnels out of construction paper and use them as the points on your towers. Water for your mote can be made out of colored plastic cling wrap. Hope this helps! Remember, just have fun with it!
www.yourchildlearns.com/
These are a couple of places when I googled "pattern to make a castle."
Thank you Noella for the links. These were just what I had been looking for.
Thank you EVERYBODY so much! Great suggestions - at least I have something to go on now! I was at a complete loss before! :)
Once I started a project like this with my son, but we never finished it. Here were some of my ideas. Some we tried and some not. Painted a cardboard box in a darker gray. Cut a sponge into rectangle appropiate brick size for the box you've chosen. Had him sponge paint bricks in a ligher gray all over to look like a stone castle. Used paper towel rolls to fashion turets (also painted them the same way) to place on each corner of the castle.
Note that every post involves a grown-up helping the child. Is this what the teacher wants?
That is the parents job to help their child when they are 7. The teachers know this. Parents can not take over the project. You just go on the ideas that your child has and have fun together.
I need help making a Sugar Cube castle for my classroom we are having a competition.
