Making and Building a Cardbox Castle

An Elementary Students’ Project & Interesting Activity

 

Can you imagine living in a castle before? Or perhaps having a castle on your own?... 

Do you ever realize a castle hold a deep secret and mystery?

Could you imagine how they build such a tremendous concrete with a minimum building tool?

So does the feeling that most of my students had... They really want to feel living in a medieval era.

It was on October 2011, when my school held an exhibition. The exhibition itself mainly would display our students’ creativity works and performed some talent they got. The theme itself called “Around The world”. So every department in my former school established certain culture themes that represented five big continents in the world. The Playgroup or kindergarten displayed Hawaiian theme, The lower grade of elementary displayed Japanese Culture, The higher grade displayed Oriental Customs, The Senior School had a Halloween Around the world and the National Plus department displayed European Culture.

So why did we build a castle?

As we had learned and made some researches through books and internets, we conclude that European countries have some marvelous castle from the medieval ages. Today the castle itself still stands tall and has a function as Gallery, museum and sort of learning centre. Besides, The process of building is an interesting activities for our kids. 

The Planning of Making the Cardbox Castle;

In order to accomplish this idea to become real we need a well-planned design of course. The planning scoped about the materials we need, the builders, the fund we have, the master design of the castle, the ornament we need, the media we need to display and of course the time management doing this become real. We have only two weeks time and as you can see, we cannot leave our daily lesson behind. 

 So this is what we have done

By the time, the teachers and kids agreed that we would build the castle, we set some job description.

Every student must bring one or two or even more boxes. We standardized the box we collect which was from after used drinking bottle package. Well, it would be like a big brick. We set a week time for collecting all of the cardbox. 

While we collected the boxes, we are using 70 minutes a day of our lesson to make decorations and attributes for our castle. There were around 60-70 builders, most of them were our students ranged of age between 6-12 years old. They are divided into some groups which have different task and responsibilities:

Grade 1: FLY the FLAG

They made a triangular flag of some countries in Europe. For the material, they used a white concrete paper. They cut the paper into triangular shape. Drew a flag on the paper and colored it when finished drawing a flag. One student should have made one flag.

Grade 2: WELCOMING Greetings

It is quite difficult. Everyone must make a welcoming greeting such as “WELCOME” in various languages spoken in Europe. They must choose what language they want to use. They have to search the translation of every meaning in various languages. After that they will write them down on piece of papers with colorful tone and fonts.  They shouldn’t print from any computer. It even looks artistic. Every student should have produced one or two greetings.  

Grade 3: The EUROPEAN Tribes and Race

 

Yeaaah  this is the task for grade 3 students. They should find Black and White pictures of some tribes and races live in Europe. They should put some color on the pictures and write something about the tribes and races. this time they focused writing about the traditional costumes.  They preferred the Dutch Little girl costumes, the Viking, The Roman Soldier, the great philosophers from Greece, and some more. 

Grade 4: They have joined higher Grades

Grade 5: Landmark and Highlights

Meanwhile grade 5 students would make some handwriting article about European Landmarks. They wrote something they like. For instance, they write about Eiffel tower, Leaning Tower Pisa, The coliseum in Rome! Why? Because some of them have a dream to visit some countries in Europe and they really wants to write about it. Thing that I like about their writing is THE FUN FACTS they wrote after they made several researches thorough literary and internet.       

 Grade 6: FUN FACTS about EUROPEAN Countries

Grade 6 students have a part to make a short report about some European countries. Their writing focused on the general information, special icons and also Fun facts they found in some countries in Europe. 

One simple rule is No Copy Paste from related sources. if they are proven doing this cheating, their works will not share a spot on the castle and more over they will get severe penalty. We should have finished this attributes for about a week. We really had to plan this well.

The Step of Making the cardbox castle.

After the entire classes gather all the cardbox we had demanded and instructed, we started to work on our castle step by step.  

First, flip down the paper.

Some Grade 5 & 6 students did this part in turn. There were 5-6 students each turn. We flipped down the box so that the brand of drinking bottle producer hidden. It means that we use the inner side of the box to the outer part of our bricks from boxes. Beside it will save more paints in our project. We had to be efficient. 

Second, stick and tape the box. 

Now, we should make a lot of bricks again from the flipped down. here the job is quite easy. we need tape and big stapler to make our bricks more solid. it is also to main its shape so it will be easy to construct a wall made from boxes.

Third, Build a temporary Castle

After all the box are flipped down and taped, we make a castle simulation building. We set the wide and the length of the castle. We also set up the height of the castle. This is the prototype. Other word, we can figure out how many more boxes we need. 

After that, solidify the castle

After we are pretty sure all the materials ready, we set up the cornerstone on the spot we have decided and begin the construction work.  Soon after we are sure, the model of our castle, we make it more solid by taping the edge of every brick. We need a lot of taping measure in this part. Make sure the tape is made of paper or any materials which enable us to cover the tape with paint.

Next, Paint the castle.

After all of boxes are used and the building has erected, we should paint the wall of the castle. there are two option anyway: let it as original color which is brown or paint the boxes darker. you can cover up with grey or yellow. but make sure you differentiate the color between the color every edge of the brick and the brick/wall itself. 

Then, Make additional iconic landmarks. 

We add up with European traditional iconic which is made from the left over boxes and Styrofoam. The models are far away alike from the genuine icon but that’s the unique point. These time we made the London’s Big Ben, the Dutch’ Windmill, and the Paris’ Eiffel Tower. Tthis is not mandatory step, in case if you still have time left you probably could do this.

Finally, Display the attributed

After the paint is dry; the castle model is ready; and for the final steps, we display the children’ projects. We glue them on the wall, hang them on the rope, and just placed them on the wall upper surface. Set up traditional Irish and Scottish music.  We also ask people a very small of money in case they want to take picture in front of our castle.  

I think your children will have challenge and fun activity when you start firing this idea to your class.

Happy Trying