RECYCLE, REUSE, DIY KIDS LAPTOP COMPUTER

Man, my kids (especially the oldest) love to make stuff out of boxes. And I must say, it brings ideas to my head a lot of times too. They will say, "Oh I wish we had...." or "Oh I wish we could make..." and I will think of some way we can do it with stuff we already have around the house. One of the main reasons is because I know all too well that with time they get bored of things. And after being a parent for 8 years and now with 4 kids, I see it over and over again. They think they want something, and money is spent, then within sometimes a week there is a loss of interest. So, when we try to make something and it doesn't cost much or any money at all to make, then there is not much lost. Plus, it's promoting creativity.

For a few weeks Elle kept saying how she would love a laptop computer (toy one). And then she started asking me if I knew how to make one. So, I'm looking at the recycling pile and one day I get this idea to make them laptop computers. This is a non sewing DIY project. 

This is what we did. We took some used cardboard boxes (cereal, waffles, frozen food boxes, whatever) and I used one for the base. I did not cut this one at all. I covered it with fabric using a hot glue gun (wrapping it up as you would wrap a present and glueing it). Then I cut one side of a box off (measuring it to be the same length as the base) and covered the printed side with fabric so you will not see any labels, but left the under side brown (which is the color of the inside of the box). This becomes the "screen". I then glued that piece onto the base folding about an inch crease for glueing. We then glued a piece of fabric (I used felt) on top of the base as the "keyboard". The girls cut out paper and wrote their own letters, numbers and symbols. Then we glued that on top of the felt fabric. 

Now you could just leave it as that...but as we were experimenting, Elle said she really wanted it to sound like a computer! Ha! So challenging. Well, a friend of mine had just recently told me about a crinkle toy she was making for her baby and all you do is use an old plastic bag (like the kind that the cereal comes in). I found that the thicker the plastic the better and louder the sound. So what we did was place a crinkled up piece of plastic underneath the felt fabric (but not glueing it because you want it to be loose so it makes the typing sound) and glued the edges of the felt on top.

And there you go! Laptop computers for everyone. And I forgot to mention, we added little tabs attaching at the bottom of the screen to help it stay opened when being used. And when they are ready to close it, you just tuck them down. I have to say, we made these a few months ago in our old house and they are still using them! This was a keeper.