With school back in full swing around the country (finally!) there’s ample opportunity to get the  kids involved in crafts. New pencils, markers, and crayons need a place to live, and to get your elementary school kids excited about all that’s ahead of them this fall, pick up a few craft supplies—and a few items from the recycling bin—and make this handy and adorable school bus supply holder!

ps…If you like this project and want more vehicle crafts, check out my book, Project Kid: Crafts that Go!

What you’ll need:

• One 3-inch-square cracker box (mine was a Stoned Wheat Thins box)
• Yellow paint
• 2 paintbrushes: 1 thick and 1 thin
• 1 small jewelry box
• 2 small yogurt cups
• Pencil
• Scissors
• Hot-glue gun
• Chalkboard paint
• 4 Cabone rings (available from Michaels.com)
• Black yarn
• 4 red thumbtacks
• 2 silver snaps or buttons
• Black permanent marker

Make It:

1. Unfold the cracker box and paint the inside yellow. Paint the outside of small jewelry box yellow (set aside the lid—save it for another project). Let both dry.

2. Trace the open ends of the yogurt cups about 1 inch apart on one side of the box. Have an adult use scissors to puncture a small hole inside each circle and let the child cut the shapes out (staying about 1/8 inch inside the line).

3. Restore the cracker box to its three dimensional shape with the yellow side showing, and have an adult hot-glue it back together. Insert the yogurt cups into the holes you cut on the roof (if your cups don’t have a lip to hold them in place, stuff some newspaper underneath for support). To make the bus’s hood, glue the jewelry box, open side down, to the bottom half of one of the short sides of the cracker box.

4. Paint six windows on each side of the bus; paint two doors, the front windshield, and a front bumper onto the bus with chalkboard paint (refer to page 49 for placement). The bus windows should be about 1 inch square and the doors about 1 inch wide by 2 inches tall. The windshield should cover most of the area above the hood, leaving just a slim yellow frame. To make the bumper, paint a thin black stripe along the bottom, open end of the jewelry box.

5. To make the bus’s wheels, paint the Cabone rings in chalkboard paint and let dry.

6. Have an adult hot-glue one end of the yarn to the ring. Wrap the yarn around each ring, turning the ring to create an asterisk wheel pattern. After four to five wraps, cut the yarn and have an adult hot-glue the loose end to the ring. Hot-glue each wheel about 1 inch in from the front and back of the bus on both sides.

7. Add the brake lights and parking lights by pushing two red thumbtacks into each corner above the windshield (secure with a dot of glue if needed); to make the headlights, glue the snaps on the bumper.

8. Draw the bus’s grille by making three horizontal marker lines on the front of the hood, just above the bumper. Draw two horizontal lines along each side of the bus, under the windows.

This post includes affiliate links! 

Excerpted from Project Kid: Crafts that Go! by Amanda Kingloff (Artisan Books). Copyright © 2016. Photographs by Alexandra Grablewski.

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September 8, 2017| Back to School, DIY Home, Everyday Crafts, Fall, Organization, Paper, Upcycled, Vehicles