Create a vibrant xylophone craft with paper tubes. This fun DIY teaches kids the letter X through imaginative play and music. Discover step-by-step instructions to make a vibrant xylophone and boost your child’s creativity and learning.

Fun and Educational: The Perfect Xylophone Craft for Kids

Creating a xylophone craft with your children is more than just a fun activity; it offers numerous educational benefits. By making a xylophone out of paper tubes, cardboard, and rubber bands, kids can explore basic principles of music and sound, enhance their fine motor skills, and boost their creativity. Painting each tube in rainbow colors adds an extra layer of learning, helping children recognize color patterns and sequences. This hands-on project also reinforces the letter X, making it an excellent addition to any early literacy curriculum. This craft provides a playful yet educational experience that engages young minds and fosters a love for learning.

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Benefits of Using Recycled Materials and Household Goods in Crafts

Using recycled materials and household items like paper tubes, cardboard, and rubber bands in this xylophone craft promotes environmental awareness and sustainability by reducing waste and encouraging reuse. This approach makes crafting more accessible and affordable, sparking creativity and resourcefulness as children transform everyday objects into imaginative creations. Additionally, it enhances sensory experiences and fine motor skills through the diverse textures and shapes of recycled materials. Overall, this practice fosters eco-friendly habits, provides educational value, and instills a sense of accomplishment and pride in making something beautiful from simple, readily available items.

• Cardboard

• Rubber Bands

• Paper Tubes

• Acrylic Paint

• Craft Knife or Box Cutter

• Cardboard

• Rubber Bands

Step 1

Prepare the Tubes: Cut the paper tubes to different lengths to create different notes. Arrange the tubes from longest to shortest to achieve a descending pitch.

Step 2

Paint the Tubes: Use the rainbow colors of paint to coat each tube in vibrant hues. Allow the paint to dry completely before moving on to the next step.

Step 3

Create the Xylophone Craft Base: Cut a piece of cardboard to serve as the base of the xylophone. Arrange the painted tubes on the cardboard, leaving a small gap between each one.

Step 4

Secure with Rubber Bands: To put the tubes together, use a rubber band. Grab and place the smaller piece next to the next smallest piece and wrap in a figure-eight pattern. Put a rubber band on each side. Repeat with all the layers. Put the tubes into the xylophone and see how it sounds! 

Integrating Learning with the Xylophone Craft

The xylophone craft offers rich opportunities for integrated learning. Children can explore musical concepts by tapping the tubes to understand different pitches and rhythms. Painting the tubes in rainbow colors helps with color recognition and sequencing, while assembling the xylophone enhances fine motor skills. Discussing the process and materials enriches vocabulary, and measuring and numbering the tubes introduces basic math skills. Encouraging creative play with the finished xylophone fosters self-expression and confidence, making this craft a comprehensive educational activity.

This DIY car toy is a genius way to use recycled materials for a craft you can play with! It also makes for a fun storage solution! This “car cabin” is a simple homemade way for kids to make a “garage” to store all their vehicles and be creative and inventive at the same time! 

A Budget Friendly DIY Car Toy

Whether from a paper towel roll or a toilet paper roll, we always save up those cardboard paper tubes! And this was such a fun way to use them up without having to buy any supplies.

This activity is also a great way to get kids outside and looking for fun and unique items to add to their creations. For example, the roof can easily be made up of sticks so that it creates a natural cabin look. 

For more arts and crafts activities, visit our comprehensive list of ideas! Our list of ideas is always growing, and we love sharing the creativity with all of you!  

How to Make a DIY Car Toy Garage

This arts and crafts project is super adaptable! We decided to design it like a cabin, using the inside of the paper tubes as slots for the individual cars, and utilizing sticks outside for a textured roof! However, you can mix up the design, colors, and details based on your kiddo’s preferences!

All activities should be supervised by an adult. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. This post may contain affiliate links.

• Branches
• Toy Cars

• Paper Tubes
• Hot Glue or Tacky Glue
• Paint Sticks
• Branches
• Toy Cars

Step 3

Add 4 paper tube rolls on the roof sides. These make for fun ramps!

Step 4

Optional, add sticks to the roof or other items as details!

Step 5

Finally, have the kids color the paper tubes and sticks. If you use paint sticks, it will dry very quickly! 

Step 1

Assemble the paper tubes in a triangle shape. We started with 5 at the base, and decreased by one with each layer. To stick them together quickly, use hot glue, but if you prefer the kiddo’s to glue on their own, then use tacky glue.

Step 2

Glue 4 toilet paper tubes at the base for a raised look. This also allows cars to ride and park underneath!

Step 3

Add 4 paper tube rolles on the roof sides. These make for fun ramps!

Step 4

Optional, add sticks to the roof or other items as details!

Step 5

Finally, have the kids color the paper tubes and sticks. If you use paint sticks, it will dry very quickly! 

Printable Worksheets for the Transportation Fan!

From trains to planes to buses and boats, we created a bundle full of early childhood activities that integrate all things transportation!

These worksheets feature all things that move on land, air and sea while giving your little one a strong foundation for early childhood education skills.

Topics covered include letter writing, phonics, number recognition, counting, scissor skills, patterning, color recognition, and so much more.

And for more hands on transportation crafts, definitely check out our Milk Jug Car Wash and DIY Race Track made out of paper tubes!

The Educational Benefits of Crafting This DIY Car Toy

What’s better than an arts and crafts project? An arts and craft project you can play with time and time again!

Engaging in arts and crafts allows kids to be creative and tap utilize their fine motor skills. For example, they’ll have to use their hands and eyes to line up and coordinate stacking and gluing. Plus, this is the perfect way to introduce kids to engineering skills!

And let’s not forget about imaginative play! Once this DIY car toy is ready to be played with, kid’s can create the most amazing pretend world while playing and storing their cars.

Make this school bus craft out of an egg carton and other recycled materials. This is a great craft to do during back-to-school time, but is also just simply a fun activity for transportation fans in general!

Recycle and Repurpose with this School Bus Craft 

This craft is so much fun to make. I LOVE showing the kids how to upcycle items from around the house to give them new life. Every material used in this school bus craft came from a recyclable object, including an egg carton, cardboard, straw, and bottle caps! Keep on reading to find out how we made the wheels moveable – a technique you can use in all types of DIY transportation vehicles!

All activities should be supervised by an adult. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. This post may contain affiliate links.

DIY School Bus in Action!

In this video you’ll see how my kiddo grabbed every figurine he could find to fill up the school bus for some fun pretend play! Each of the egg slots is a perfect seat for an action figure or peg person!

Keep on reading to see the step-by-step breakdown on how you can make a school bus craft too! Just a few simple steps are all that you need to make this easy egg carton craft. The kids can really do a lot of the actions themselves, which is the perfect way to build their confidence while helping them be creative at the same time. (The part with the hot glue gun is going to be all for the parents, though!)

DIY School Bus Craft Tips!

Sanitize your egg carton! If you are using a cardboard egg carton, you can sanitize it by heating it in the oven for 20 minutes at 170F. This will get rid of the germs and make it safe to craft with.

A Faster Way to Paint! If you are on a time crunch, instead of using acrylic paint, you can use yellow spray paint. Spray paint spreads the colors in seconds and can dry in minutes! However, if you’re letting the kids take over, stick with acrylic paint. Keep in mind that acrylic paint is not washable, but it is brighter on cardboard than tempera, washable paint.

Make Your Own DIY Peg People! Peg people, or peg dolls, are such a great open ended toy! We love them so much we made our own. Read more about how you can do it too!

• Hot glue gun
• Paint
• People (for pretend play!)

• Egg carton
• 2 Straws
• 2 Skewers or Dowels
• 4 Bottle caps
• Hot glue gun
• Paint
• People (for pretend play!)

Step 3

Make two wheels and axles by threading a skewer or dowel through a straw and hot gluing the two bottle caps on each end of the skewer/dowel. Make sure you don’t hot glue the straw because then it may affect the wheels ability to move!

Step 4

Add figurines to spark imaginative play!

Step 1

On your egg carton, cut out a few holes to make the school bus windows. 

Step 2

Paint the school bus and let it dry. Younger kids may need adult help in making the school bus wording. and details.

Step 3

Make two wheels and axles by threading a skewer or dowel through a straw and hot gluing the two bottle caps on each end of the skewer/dowel. Make sure you don’t hot glue the straw because then it may affect the wheels ability to move!

Step 4

Add figurines to spark imaginative play!

Printable Worksheets for the Transporation Fan!

From trains to planes to buses and boats, we created a bundle full of early childhood activities that integrate all things transportation!

These worksheets feature all things that move on land, air and sea while giving your little one a strong foundation for early childhood education skills. Topics covered include letter writing, phonics, number recognition, counting, scissor skills, patterning, color recognition, and so much more.

And for more hands on transportation crafts, definitely check out our Milk Jug Car Wash and DIY Race Track made out of paper tubes!