Part 5
A box in which the apothecary packs his powders makes the little farm cart in the picture, and another one the wheelbarrow. No cutting is necessary for the cart, but some of the cardboard left in the cover of the note paper box can be used for wheels. A fifty-cent bit is the right size for the wheels. Lay one on the cardboard, and draw carefully around it with a pencil, cutting four of these wheels with a pair of sharp scissors. Brass paper fasteners will make strong hubs for the little wheels. Pierce a hole through both wheel and box before inserting the fastener, though, to help the wheel to turn. A strip of the box cover glued to the front of the cart serves for the handle.
The wheelbarrow is just a little more difficult to make than these other toys, but not too great a task for a child with clever fingers. A section that is about one third of the entire length is measured and cut off the second small box, and thrown away. It is the remaining two-thirds of the box that is to make the wheelbarrow. The front, open edges of the box are now curved like the sides of a real wheelbarrow. Two narrow strips of the cover, or two small sticks are glued to the front of the wheelbarrow for handles, and two shorter lengths of cardboard or two very tiny sticks form the legs. Another cardboard circle cut the same size as those used for the cart wheels is inserted by means of a knife cut in the back of the barrow and helps it to trundle along.
The box-built cart and wheelbarrow will be found most useful in the spring. They can be loaded with little green apples, tiny brown pebbles that look like toy potatoes, corn kernels, or peas. They will be strong enough to last a whole season and help to carry fodder to the horse who lives in the box barn.
There is still more box fun. Ask mother for an empty cardboard starch box, the strong kind covered with blue paper, and see what a fine little toy garage it will make. Almost every child has a toy automobile given him for Christmas, but it is so apt to go steering away with its own gasoline, and losing itself somewhere in the house if a child has no special place in which to keep it.
Take the cover of the box and turn the box itself bottom side up. On one side, right in the center, draw a big square. The lower part of the square should come on the very outside edge of the box because this square is to be the garage door. The door should be made in two parts, so as to open very wide and admit the automobile when it comes steaming along in a great hurry. To make this double door, draw a perpendicular line that divides the square into two parts. Then, with a pair of sharp scissors cut right up this line to the top of the square. Next, cut along the top line to the right and left of the middle line. Folding back the two halves that have just been cut, out toward the outside of the box, makes two little doors and opens the front of the garage. Square windows can be cut in the sides of the box, as many as one wishes.
A number of empty thread boxes will make a splendid train of cars, strong enough to drag a whole family of china dolls or a load of live stock up and down the piazza or along the garden path. Cardboard circles cut from the covers of the thread boxes and of the same size as those used for the wheels of the toy cart make the car wheels. They are fastened on, either in similar fashion to the cart wheels by means of paper fasteners, or a bone collar button may be pushed through cart and wheel, helping the wheels to revolve more easily. One of the thread boxes has the cover glued on, and to the top is glued also one large wooden spool for the engine’s smoke stack, and a block for the engineer’s cab. These little box cars are coupled together by short lengths of braided cord. Holes are punched in the ends of the cars with an awl and the cord is pushed through and knotted at each end to hold it in place. A long piece of cord is fastened to the engine and is used to draw the cars by.
There is no end to the entertainment and fun to be had from a pile of empty boxes. Just get to work at a few of them your next free afternoon and find out how much they are able to help you in your play.
A RECIPE FOR A NOAH’S ARK
It isn’t a very difficult recipe to follow. All the stirring you need to do will be when you mix up some flour and a little water to make the paste. That is the first ingredient. Next in the recipe comes a pair of sharp scissors and a pencil. After that you must find some sheets of heavy paper, and the old animal picture books that you thought you could not enjoy any longer because the leaves were coming apart and the pictures were torn. Spread out all these things on the nursery table, and you will be ready to begin the Noah’s Ark.
The Ark itself is to be a big, strong envelope for holding all the wild animals, and this is how you must make it. One of the sheets of heavy paper should be folded in half. The folded edge forms the bottom of the envelope. Beginning with this folded edge, the outline of the Ark is drawn on the paper with your pencil. It is a simple outline to draw--a big boat with curved ends, and a sort of house resting on the top. Then, holding the folded edge tightly so that the paper will not slip, cut out the Ark. The ends of the Ark should be bound or glued, but the top is left open that the animals may be put in.
Windows and a door are cut in the Ark for the animals will want to look out as they sail away on their wonderful voyage, and the Ark may be painted bright red with green trimmings.
Next come the animals.
The pictures of the animals may be mounted on one of the remaining sheets of heavy paper, so they will be stiff enough to stand up alone. That is one way of making enough animals to fill the Ark, but there is another way that will take a little longer, but will prove ever so much more fun.
The loose pictures from the book of animals should be fastened to the table with thumb tacks, or tacked to a drawing board. A square of white tissue paper is then laid over each, and the outline of the animal’s body is traced with a soft pencil. When the tracing is finished, the tissue paper is carefully lifted off and laid with the plain side up on some stiff white cardboard. The outline is then retraced with the same soft pencil leaving a pattern of the animal on the cardboard. The animal is then cut out, and painted with the nursery water colors.
You will need to be very clever, indeed, to paint the animals so that they will look as if they were just fresh from the jungle. There must be a tawny lion colored with brown that has a great deal of yellow ocher mixed with it. The panther must be orange with big yellow spots, and large green eyes. The tiger’s eyes must have yellow mixed with the green paint and his coat is yellow with orange stripes. The bear is brown and the kangaroo is tan.
There should be two of each kind of animal. Now how shall you make them stand up and walk like real, live animals? Some very tiny bits of wood may be glued to their feet. That is one way of making the animals stand. Another way is to make a narrow ring of the same cardboard from which the animals were cut. The animals’ feet are then glued to this ring, and they will really stand.
A boy will be able to make more animals than he can count,--leopards, monkeys, zebras, elephants, as many as he can find patterns for in his toy picture books. And it will prove such fun to draw them and paint them that he will be kept busy for many rainy afternoons.
HOW TO MAKE YOUR OWN UNIFORM
Every boy needs to be a soldier, once in a while. There are so many brave deeds to be done and so many cowardly things to fight, and so much dark to walk through courageously, and so many strange dogs and cats, and shy little girls to protect with all the gallantry of those old, old knights who lived in the story-book days. A soldier boy is never late for school, and he never, never forgets to do an errand. He goes to bed alone every evening at eight, even if the stairway is dark, and there is no light in the upstairs hall to chase away the ghosts. He never lies, and he is always cheerful. He knows that being brave and gallant and true is just as much a part of a soldier’s duty as marching, and drumming, and saluting Old Glory.
It isn’t easy to be a soldier though in a plain, everyday suit of clothes, made of homespun perhaps, and patched, and dingy brown in color. A real soldier suit cut and fitted the right size for a boy costs more money than there is in the boy’s tin bank. What is the boy going to do if he wants more than anything else to be a soldier and he hasn’t enough money to buy himself a suit?
Any boy will be able to make the soldier trappings shown in the picture, and when he puts on the cap, and the shield, pins the epaulets to his shoulders and sticks the play sword in his belt, he will be ready for the life of a little soldier. He can work or play cheerfully, and when it comes Saturday, or Washington’s Birthday, he will be the envy of all the other boys as he leads them in a fine parade, dressed in his gay, home-made soldier things.
Suppose we make the soldier’s cap first. The diagram marked Fig. 1, 2, 3, and 4, shows just how to do the construction. A bright red cap will be fine for the soldier, or a blue one just the color of the blue field in the flag. There is a kind of tough, half-heavy paper called book cover paper. One can order it from a stationer’s shop or a printing factory at a cent or two a sheet. Some sheets of this will make the boy’s own cap and enough for all the other soldiers in the regiment. A piece of paper that measures fourteen by twenty inches is the foundation for the soldier cap. Fold the two narrower edges together until they touch, and crease the paper through the center as shown in Fig. 1. Then with the paper still folded, make a second fold as shown by the line in Fig. 2. This line forms a guide line for the next two folds which make the point of the cap. Lay the papers, open, as in Fig. 1, on a table with the folded edge at the back; fold each half of the back edge down along the line made by the last folding. Then fold up and crease the lower open edges forming the rim of the cap. The rim should be glued down to make the cap firm and strong. A feather can be made by fringing strips of red or blue crépe paper and twisting them around a narrow strip of cardboard which is glued inside the rim of the cap. A turkey’s feather will do just as well, or a bunch of hen’s feathers, or a cockade made of red, white, and blue ribbons to decorate the cap.
A boy can find a splendid shield pattern in the back of the dictionary. Copy it, and enlarge it until it is the right size to cover a boy’s shirt bosom. Then draw it on heavy white cardboard, and cut it out. A good size for the shield will be eight by ten inches. When it is cut it can be decorated with stars and stripes with colored pencils or paints as shown in the picture. The stripes are drawn carefully with a ruler and filled in with color; one red and one white. The blue ground above the stripes is dotted with stars cut from gilt paper and pasted on. Two holes are punched in the sides of the shield, and a bit of cord is strung in by means of which the shield may be hung around a boy’s neck. It will make his heart beat faster and give him a whole lot of courage every time he looks down at its brave stars and stripes.
Now for the sword which looks like a formidable weapon in the picture, but is really not dangerous at all. Every boy knows how to roll a narrow piece of paper, and make a lamp lighter. The sword that is part of this home-made soldier suit is made in just the same way. Cut some narrow strips of the book cover paper and join them with glue until there is a long strip. Roll this strip of paper tightly, in lamp lighter fashion, until it is fifteen inches long. Then press it flat between heavy weights. Roll a second strip of paper for a length of six inches and glue it to the broad end of the sword as a handle. These swords are so delightfully easy to make that a boy will want to roll a dozen after he has made his first one, and he can arm himself with as many paper poniards as an Indian chief has arrows in his quiver.
The soldier’s epaulets are just five by two inch strips of the book cover paper cut to fit a boy’s shoulders and decorated with fringed red and blue tissue paper. They can be pinned to the soldier’s coat shoulders with safety pins and will make an ordinary play suit quite as military in appearance as any uniform.
When the boy soldier is dressed in this home-made uniform, which will be even more effective than any which is for sale in a toy shop, he will be ready for any adventure in addition to the brave prowess of everyday life. Perhaps he and the other boys will want to take one of mother’s old blankets and two or three clothes poles for a tent, and tramp as far as the woods for a day of real scouting. Every soldier has a knapsack for carrying provisions and this play soldier will need one, too. A large, flat box makes a fine knapsack. Inside can be packed a bundle of sandwiches, two or three apples, a doughnut or two, and a piece of pie or a big slice of pound cake. When the box is packed, tie it securely with a length of cord, and have one end of the cord for a strap by means of which the knapsack is hung across the soldier’s back. Roll a square of old blanket and tie to the top of the box just as a real soldier fastens his blanket to his knapsack, and the make-believe soldier in cap, epaulets, and shield can draw his sword and start off in search of any adventure.
JOINTED TOY ANIMALS. HOW TO MAKE THEM
They will really do “stunts,” these toys in the picture. The grasshopper will hop if you stand him up on a table and give him a chance. The turtle will crawl along much faster than an ordinary, live turtle. The crocodile will follow you so fast that you will surely be eaten by him unless you hurry. What fun it is going to be to play with these live toys, but first a child must make them, and as many more as he likes.
Clear a low table on which to work and find some heavy cardboard or thick water color paper from which to construct the animals. Bring also, a pair of strong scissors, a sheet of tracing paper, a soft lead pencil and the box of water color paints you found in your stocking last Christmas. These are all the tools and material necessary for making a barnful of animals. Ask mother for some porcelain collar buttons to fasten the animals’ legs to the bodies. The laundry man brings so many of these useless studs every week and a crop of them will be fine for jointing the animals. If one cannot find enough collar buttons, a box of tiny brass paper fasteners will serve very well instead.
Every boy knows how to draw a few animals, at least free hand. If he is clever enough to be able to do this just by watching the horses out in the street, or the tiger in the Zoo, or the kitten who sits in front of the nursery fire, washing her face, so much the better. He will not need any patterns. The child who finds difficulty in sketching an animal free hand will have to trace his patterns from a book, or a toy animal. Often one of the nursery toy animals may be laid flat on the cardboard and its outline drawn and cut. Noah’s Ark animals, if they are large, make excellent patterns for a child to copy. If one has no toys of the right size, the tracing paper may be laid over the picture of an animal in a farm picture book, or a book that tells about the jungle, or a book on Natural History. When the outline of the animal has been neatly traced on the tracing cloth, it should be transferred to the cardboard from which the animal is to be made. When a child has obtained a clear outline in this way, he may next proceed to make the animals alive.
First, he must decide just the location of the animal’s joints. Where are the tiger’s paws fastened to his legs? Where are the grasshopper’s knees? Where, hidden underneath his shell are the turtle’s funny little flat feet attached to his body? Then, using the pattern which has just been made, a new pattern of the creature’s body is made, then a pattern of a leg, a tail, an ear, and these sections are all cut from the cardboard, separately, with scissors or the sharp jack-knife. In cutting out legs and paws, they should be made always a little longer than the original pattern to allow for the joint by which they are fastened to the body. As soon as all the parts of an animal have been cut from the cardboard, they should be laid in place and holes punched with a coarse needle or an awl at the joints. If the animal is a huge one, the collar buttons may be slipped in these holes to hold the sections together. In the case of the toy creatures shown in the picture, paper fasteners were used. When these joints have been made the toys will stand or sit, cock their ears or wag their tails, leap or run--in fact they will do anything a boy wishes.
The paints come next. It will be great fun to make the toy animals just the right color. A tiger may be such a gorgeous yellow with bright green eyes and black stripes. The grasshopper may be either green or a warm brown, and the turtle’s house which he must always carry around on his back should be painted gray.
These jointed animals may be persuaded to act out the children’s favorite stories and will furnish a new kind of fun for rainy afternoons in the house.
Little Brer Rabbit can be easily made of white cardboard from the pictures of Peter Rabbit or the rabbit pictures on an Easter card. Then Brer Rabbit and Old Man Terrapin may act out on the nursery table the famous race that Uncle Remus has told us about. A shoe box may be used for a miniature stage if it is placed on its side on a table, some scenery is painted in at the back and a little cloth curtain hung at the front. Through a hole in one end the jointed animals may be put in and they will perform most acceptably for an audience of dolls.
Two children playing together, or two groups of children can each make a set of jointed animals and then pose them to illustrate a favorite story, the other child or group guessing the story illustrated.
Many other plays will suggest themselves when one has a set of animals which are really alive and which a child has made, all himself.
YOUR OWN CIRCUS
It is going to be a circus small enough to fit in any house. In fact, it will be possible to put it within the boundaries of an old table. Because you can’t always have an outdoor show is just the reason that you are going to plan this fine, diminutive one in the house. It may take several days to get it ready, but once your indoor circus is finished, you will find it almost if not quite as interesting as a real one.
First, find an old table somewhere to be used as a circus ground. A pine table will serve nicely, and if you can find some old green muslin with which to cover it, you will discover that it looks exactly like the grass in the field where the real circus is held. Tack the muslin to the under side of the table top so that it will not wrinkle and interfere with the circus parade. Now you are ready for the rope fence which always encloses a circus ground.
In the four corners of the table bore, with a gimlet, through the canvas, some holes that are just the right size to hold dowel sticks, five inches long. You can buy these dowel sticks of a carpenter in foot lengths at a few cents each. Glue the posts in the holes which you have bored in the table and also bore extra holes for two more about a foot apart in the front of the table. These last little posts are for the gate to your circus ground. When the glue has set and the posts are perfectly dry, tie cord to one, near the top, and then stretch it to another, knotting it, until you have finished the rope fence that encloses the circus ground. If you like you can have two or three rows of cord, and you can print a little circus sign to pin to the gate. It may read:
THE GREAT AND ONLY ANIMAL SHOW
Clowns, Wild Beasts, and the Biggest Elephant in the World.
Performances Every Afternoon and Evening.
Admission, Adults, two pins, Children, alone, one pin.
COME ONE. COME ALL!
All around the edges of the bill you can draw pictures of wild animals with your colored pencils.
The circus ground will look very much pleasanter if you have a few trees standing about on the edges, and these trees will be useful, also, to tie some of your wild beasts to.
Meat skewers will do nicely for the tree trunks if you fringe ever so many narrow, doubled strips of green tissue paper, and wind them with it, fastening the fringes to the meat skewer with mucilage. The green paper flutters in the air quite like real foliage in the breeze on circus day, and the little trees will stand up nicely if you stick the end of each skewer inside an empty spool, glueing it there so that it will stay in place.
Did you think that you were never coming to the tent for your circus? Well, here it is, and the picture shows you just how to construct it. You will need to enlarge the diagram several times the size which you see in the picture, but that is easily accomplished by means of your ruler and lead pencil. Use some sort of tough, firm paper for the tent. Water color paper will be splendid because you can get out your paint box and paint pictures of wild men and palm trees and animals on the sides. If you have no water color paper, use brown bristol board. The latter makes a fine stiff tent. Cut out the top and sides as carefully as you can, bend them, and glue or paste them together. Then stand the tent up in the center of your circus ground.
The animals, next.
There are patterns for them, too, which you will see in the picture and which are so simple as to be very easily enlarged. The animals can be made of the same kind of paper which you used for the tent, and then painted, the elephant gray, the camel a soft brown and the deer a dull reddish color, or you can cut them out of wood. This is perhaps the better way. Use thin pieces of very soft, white wood. An excellent wood is holly or soft pine, in the thin sheets which are used for jig saw work, and for making picture puzzles. Draw the pattern of the animal which you wish to make first very carefully on your piece of wood. Give your best jack-knife two or three turns on a grindstone so that it will be nice and sharp, and then go to work cutting the animal, not your fingers. Make as many animals as you can, and glue their feet to tiny blocks of kindling wood so that they will stand. Touch them up a little with paint, too, to make them look wilder.
If you want cages for your animals use empty spool boxes, covers and all. Cut bars in the cover of each box with your jack-knife, stand the animal inside and put the cover back on. The box rests on cardboard wheels which are glued to the long, narrow side of the box.
A clever boy will be able to invent the acts for the circus. One can rig up trapezes and flying swings and tight rope appliances very easily by using strings and spools. One can paint flags of all nations or cut them from colored tissue paper to float from the roof of the tent, and this little home-made circus will be so attractive that all the other boys will want to make similar ones just as soon as they see it.
BEAD WORK FOR BOYS