Doc McStuffins may not be all the rage is was 10 years ago, but you can still catch episodes on Disney+. And even if your child has never watched it and will probably not watch it, this Doc-Mobile is still an adorable little mobile clinic for all your pretend doctors and veterinarians! Little C had a spontaneous need for a Doc-mobile so this was a spur of the moment-fast as possible creation. If I were to make it again, I would replace the Tinkertoy wheels and pull handle with something permanent. If I ever make it again, I'll update. But for now, here's what I used to build the Doc-mobile.

Painting/decorating was the last thing we did since I wanted Little C to have something to play with as soon as possible. If you have the option, I recommend painting first!

First I used the screwdriver to poke holes on the sides of the box through which to push the rods that hold the wheels.  Then I poked a hole at the front for the pull handle. There's a yellow circle piece (like those used for the wheels) on the inside of the box to which the red flexible rod attaches.

Next, I had to make seats for Little C's friends. I cut rectangular flaps using the x-acto knife on either side of the box which would be used for seats. I cut a little notch at the top of the flap so Little C could easily pull the seat open when it was pushed closed. Above the flaps I cut 3 vertical slits (left, middle, right) for the seatbelts. I pushed lengths of ribbon through the slits and affixed Velcro pieces to either end so Little C could buckle her friends in. This left us with 4 seats, but Little C requested seats for the entire Mickey Mouse Clubhouse gang.

She wanted the last 2 seats on the back but that would have left Pluto sitting upright in an awkward position so I put them on the top. I cut another flap and stuck the ribbon for Goofy's seatbelt through it. It's a little hard to see, but Pluto's seatbelt comes up from underneath him, pushed through the top of the box.

Now, to hold all Little C's doctor tools, I cut a large flap at the front of the box above the pull handle. I put a little piece of Velcro on the end so it would stay closed. As you can see there is plenty of room for anything a little doctor would need!

Add some paint, decorations and friends and we're off to find toys - or people - in need of a doctor! If you make your own Doc-mobile we'd love to hear about it and see pictures!

Lil C is being Mal from Disney Descendants this Halloween so I told her I'd be Evie so we could match. I put together an Evie-like outfit with a cute blue top, black mini skirt, black tights, and black boots. I also bought an Evie necklace and tiara set and some blue hair spray. I was set on that being my costume until I happened to see a photo of Evie from the first Descendants movie with this cute boxy purse:

Then I decided I needed a purse! (alright, maybe I don't really NEED the purse, but I was feeling crafty and I wanted it!) My challenge was to make it with items already in the house because I didn't want to spend any more money on this costume - or have to leave the house if I'm being totally honest. I remembered I had a pile of large craft foam sheets in the closet so I grabbed a red one and got started - it's about 15"x19".

After some measuring and cutting, I had these two base pieces. The one on the left is 7.5" wide and 19" tall, marked off and folded at 5.5", 9", 14.5", and 18". The piece on the right is 7.5" long in the middle with 5.5" sections at the top and bottom with side flaps for gluing.

Once you have your pieces, the next step is to glue them together as shown above. Then you will fold up the front and back and glue the flaps in place to form a box. I lined the inside of the purse with cardboard to make it sturdier and stiffer. Fyi, it can be a little difficult to fold and glue the pieces into a box because the foam is so floppy - in hindsight, it might have been easier if I had glued on the cardboard pieces first and then glued the box together but I still got the end result I wanted.

Next, I had to figure out a way to attach the shoulder strap (the shoulder strap came from a clutch purse - I never use the shoulder strap so I wouldn't even miss it). I realized I simply needed some sort of loop to attach the clips to. So I searched in our crafting supplies and found a bunch of soda can tabs! I forgot to take pictures during the process but this is what I ended up with. **If you don't have a spare purse strap, you could always just tie a string to the loops - a long shoelace could work or even several strands of yarn braided together - or tie a bunch of can tabs together to make a chain strap!

I cut two identical blue foam pieces for each can tab. I laid the tab on top of one of the pieces and put a big glop of hot glue into the bottom hole and pressed the other foam piece on top. Then I glued the edges of the two foam pieces together and glued the hole thing onto the side of the purse. Repeat for the other side.

At this point I was just so excited to finish the bag I also forgot to take photos of the decorations in stages but it should be fairly easy to see from the photo.

The main part is a 3"x6" rectangle cut from light blue foam. I drew the designs onto it using blue and gold permanent markers. Then I cut and colored a small triangle to extend to the bottom of the purse (the design looks like a sword behind the heart). Finally I cut a 3.75"x2.5" heart out of white foam and colored it gold. IMPORTANT: When you glue the heart on, do not put any glue across the top or middle. As you can see above, the piece from the top slides behind the heart, keeping the purse closed. 

As for the top, I first glued a .75"x4.5" strip of blue foam down the middle of the top. Then I drew a .75"x3" rectangle on white foam and drew the curly mustache-y shape at the top (keep it in the top inch of the rectangle so it doesn't go past the edge of the flap. Color that piece gold, cut it out and glue along the path of the blue strip. The part of the strip hanging down will slide behind the heart closing it. Then all that was left was to clip the strap on! 

I will have to find a little magic mirror to put in my purse and then put some Halloween candy of my own in it! Happy Halloween!

After we had previewed "Emma Ren: Robot Engineer" by Jenny Lu back in April, I knew I had to figure out a way to bring battle bots into our home, but without spending a fortune on actual robot parts. I was browsing various robot kits when I came across a tutorial on Instructables for turning remote control cars into battle bots. The idea was to build a simple cardboard cover for the car then add weapons which would be used to pop a balloon on the opponent's car. Cardboard armor?! Ingenious! Popping balloons? Fantastic! And we even had a couple cars we could use so I didn't have to buy a single thing for this project. It couldn't be more perfect! 

We've had our cars for a couple of years so I can't find the exact same cars for sale but these two are pretty close (and budget-friendly). 

This car is similar to ours with the large yellow wheels. It has a tri-channel transmitter so you could have up to 3 of these cars racing or battling at the same time.

These cars have the 5th wheel which is pretty fun for stunt driving. I'm pretty sure if we tried to pop a wheelie while battling the armor would all fall off though. You can only race/battle two of these cars at the same time though (pay attention to the details so you don't get two cars on the same frequency - it says blue and red are the same frequency and need to be paired with black. The other colors list specific MHz). 

Anyway, on to building the battle bots!

For the 5-wheeler, I marked about where the antenna and 5th wheel were then cut holes. There's no perfect method here, start small and keep cutting the hole bigger until everything fits through. I also cut where the back wheels are since they come up high.

For the rock crawler, I flipped the truck upside down and gently pressed it into the center of the armor box so I could see where the little pegs on top lined up. You can see below where the pegs pushed into the cardboard. Then I marked where the antenna was and made holes using a screwdriver.

Here's what the armor looked like once I folded the boxes and hot glued them. 

 

I wanted the armor to come down more in the front and back to make it easier to attach the balloon as well as defenses/weapons so I glued an extra flap on both sides.

Then I gave the cars to the kids and set them loose. I let them each have two wooden skewers plus toothpicks for weapons and then whatever else they wanted from our crafting/tinkering supplies.

Mala beads are used in Buddhist prayer and meditation to help you stay focused on your mantra. Traditionally, mantras were repeated in sets of 108 and so strands of mala beads have 108 beads plus a guru bead. Mala bracelets can be made with 18 beads to help you keep track of 18 cycles of chanting. Here's how to make your own mala bracelet.

When I came up with the idea for Read and Rise Global Explorers, I was thinking about those world subscription boxes like Little Passports and Little Global Citizens. Both of those are super cute and Lil C absolutely loved getting a new package in the mail (she'd been gifted 6 months of Little Passports for a birthday). However, I know subscription boxes can get pricey - especially if you have multiple children - and not everyone can afford them. So I wanted to create something that could be done with virtually any budget, utilizing library books, video read alouds, and printables to help you and your children explore various countries around the world! But the first things we needed were a suitcase and a passport! You can get the printable passport in the post for "My Granny Went to Market," but just keep reading to find out how to turn a simple shoebox into a suitcase!

For this project, almost any cardboard shoebox can be used, but the easiest are ones where the lid is attached to the base. If you only have boxes with separate lids, you'll have to snip two of the corners and glue one of the long flaps to the base so you can open it like a suitcase. After that the instructions will be the same for both kinds of boxes.

- cardboard shoebox

- scrap pieces of corrugated and thin (like cereal box) cardboard

- 2 small brads (paper fasteners)

1. Open up all the flaps on the shoebox and reassemble it inside out so the outside of your suitcase is a solid plain color.

Box open

Box closed

2. Cut a 3/4"x4" piece of corrugated cardboard and a 2.5"x10" piece of thin cardboard. You're going to wrap the small piece in the large piece to create a handle. To make sure everything's centered, draw lines at 3" and 7" and place your small piece in between those lines. Then mark lines on either side of your small piece so you know where to fold in the next step. (Fyi, don't do what I did, mark your lines on the patterned side of your cardboard not the plain.)

4. Fold along the long lines you made in the last step. I always use a ruler to help make long straight folds.

5. Place your small piece inside and fold the cardboard around it, gluing it shut. Fold the sides up.

6. An inch and a half from each end, fold the cardboard in the opposite direction as shown below.

8. Attach to the middle of the front side of the shoebox using the two brads (it doesn't have to be exactly precisely in the middle, but doing some loose measurements will help it not be lopsided).

9. To create the latch that will hold the suitcase closed, you'll need 4 more pieces of corrugated cardboard. The long piece should be as tall as your box and about 3/4" wide. The other long piece should be about 3/4"x4" and the two short pieces will be about 3/4"x3/4" (if mine don't look square it's because I didn't actually measure...)

10. Glue the long strip to the inside of the lid.

11. Glue the two small pieces to the ends of the 4" strip.

12. Glue the 4" strip at the bottom of the box over the long strip. The vertical strip will slide underneath the horizontal strip and keep the suitcase closed while you're carrying it. 

Now you're ready to decorate your suitcase and come travel with us! 

When we began our Arctic Unit Study, I just knew I wanted to build a cardboard igloo. But I also knew I needed to improve on my building skills and use what I learned from my failures with the Haunted House Box Fort. 

The first thing I made sure to do was to use two boxes that were the exact same size for the octagon shape of the igloo. That in itself made my life much easier because I didn't have to cut anything or try to accommodate for taller or wider panels. 

The second - and possibly best - improvement I made was to toss the tape and use Makedo SCRUs for cardboard construction instead. The kids got them for Christmas and they are SUCH a game changer. They got the Makedo Toolkit and Connector 40 pack. Between the two sets they have 68 SCRUs in two sizes, a SCRU-DRIVER, a SAFE-SAW, and a MINI-TOOL.

The SCRUs hold the cardboard together much more securely than tape, they're easy to readjust, and there's no yards and yards of tape ending up in the garbage! One thing I will mention, though, is that the end of the SCRU-Driver is hard plastic that ends up digging into your palm so I would recommend wearing a glove if you're going to be building something that involves a lot of SCRUs.

Step 1: Open up two boxes of the same size, stand them up and arrange into an octagon shape. Secure the edges with SCRUs or tape. 

Step 2: Cut a curved opening for the entrance. Another improvement off the last box fort? I made sure to make the opening wide enough that I could crawl through...

Step 3: Here's where I ran into a bit of a snafu. My original plan was to cut down in between the side panels and begin folding the domed roof just above the doorway. However, the boxes I used were double-ply which meant the only way I was going to be able to fold them was to score the boxes where I wanted to fold them. In hindsight, that probably wouldn't have been too much work, but at the time it seemed like too much effort. So Plan B went into effect and the dome began higher, where the top flaps of the box were. 

Full disclosure: I did not measure anything. I simply picked a flap to start with, pushed it forward to what looked like a good angle, scored and folded the flap that would go behind, and secured them with a SCRU. I repeated all the way around until all the flaps were angled in and secured together. 

Step 4: Using scrap pieces of cardboard from a single-ply box, I shaped an arch entryway and secured it to the main part of the igloo. 

Step 5: Complete the dome. I got 8 pieces of cardboard (of the same size) that were about the same width as the walls of the igloo - each piece was the side panel of a box plus a flap on top. One at a time, I secured them to the angled flaps and used the same score and fold method to attach the pieces. 

Step 6: Fold the top flaps down, cut to shape, and secure. Because I didn't measure back in Step 3, then flaps didn't line up perfectly because all the panels were not folded at exactly the same angle. But this wasn't a huge problem. I was able to cut and fold the pieces so they all closed up pretty nicely with a little skylight left in the middle. 

Step 7: Cut small windows all around to let some extra light in. Furnish with pillows and blankets to make it nice and cozy inside so you can read a book about the Arctic!

The igloo may not have ended up EXACTLY as I had envisioned it, but all in all, I think it turned out really well and was definitely an improvement on my first box fort!