Make Your Own Aquarium

   

I love finding ways to re-use materials and this activity made use of so many bits I had lying around, just waiting for a crafty reincarnation - colourful cardboard folders that my office was throwing out, a big cardboard box, some red elastic I’d used previously for a party game and most satisfyingly the off-cuts from the ‘stone effect’ and ‘under the sea’ tuff tray liners I’d made from a metre of pvc from Dunelm (you could do this activity by drawing your own sea scene though or simply with blue paper). I also had some lovely shimmery material off-cuts that I’d bought from a fabric market stall for £1 that were put to great use.

   

Last night I cut a rectangle of the sea pvc to cover the back of the cardboard box and some of the stone pvc to cover the bottom of the box, plus some strips of shimmery material as seaweed. They all glued into place really easily with my trusty glue gun.

Phoebe & Ollie couldn’t wait to get started this morning. There was enough pvc left to cover the lid of the box so they decided they would like to do an aquarium each and helped me to make a second one, delighting in having their first go of my glue gun (under close supervision!)

We used a banana box which are easily sourced from a supermarket or market. This was a great size for it as well as being nice & sturdy plus it has holes around the edges perfect for controlling their sea creatures!

      

We cut fish, crabs, mermaids, sharks, octopus and a swordfish out of the cardboard folders and decorated some of them with the shimmery material - the fish scales material looked especially effective! 

The crabs and mermaids were sellotaped onto wooden chopsticks which we could then poke through the side holes of the box and make them move side to side. The others were sellotaped to the red elastic which was then tied to chopsticks and thread through the holes in the top of the box so that they hung down as if floating in the water, plus we could make them bob up & down using the chopstick. 

   

Ollie also stuck some creatures to his seaweed hanging from the ceiling and used some concertina paper to make some pop out from the sides of the aquarium, all his own idea!

The other bonus of the banana box is that there is a hole in the middle which lets light through the pvc. So at bedtime they are going to recreate Ollie’s Beavers camp from last year and ‘sleep in an aquarium’ - mattresses on the bedroom floor with aquariums either side of them, lit up with a torch from behind. Something tells me they’re going to have a late night tonight but that’s what the school holidays are for, making memories!