How to Make a Ship Out of a Cardboard Box

Get a large cardboard box that at least one child can sit in. Refrigerator boxes work well for seating more children and making bigger ships. Excellent resources for getting free large cardboard boxes include grocery stores, appliance stores, scratch and dent stores, and technology stores. Call the stores to request that they hold the largest box they have as well as a few smaller boxes to use to make some of the other pieces of your ship out of cardboard.

Look at pictures of real ships in books or online like the Galveston 1877 Tall Ship Elissa or the U.S. Navy Ships in the resources or a picture of a ship that is consistent with the historical time, period and culture that you are studying with your children or teaching your students about. Print or copy pages of the ship that you want to make out of a cardboard box for quick reference.

Draw a line on the side of the box to mark where you will cut the box to make it into a ship shape along the sides. For a more realistic ship, you can continue your lines on the front and back square, too---extending the shape---and squish the box pushing the front corners inward to create more of a ship shape and less of a box shape. Cut the box according to your line.

Use dowels, sticks or cardboard to create the masts to hold up sails. You can cut out grooves in the box to slid the dowels or sticks through or you can create holes in the box for threading some yarn, strong thread, or shoe laces through to hold the masts up. Cardboard masts will be weaker but they can be glued, hot glued or sewn on using a large needle and thread or embroidery thread.

Cut the material into the shapes your desire to create sails for the cardboard ship and ship flags. The sails and flags can have designs painted, colored, stamped, sewn or embroidered on them by children or adults. Attach the sails to the masts with a sewing needle and thread.

Create a wheel for the ship out of cardboard. Attach the wheel using the metal bendable clips that have a circle on one end and bendable tabs on the other---these will enable the wheel to spin completely (they are commonly used for crafts to create 2-D or 3-D animals with mobile limbs). Also create an anchor out of the extra cardboard. Attach rope to the anchor for make-believe play and always supervise children with rope. Or just attach the anchor to the side of the ship using glue or sewing through the cardboard.

Tie or sewn a doll or toy to the front of the ship on the hull or the bowsprit---if you have made a cardboard ship with one. Paint the name of the ship on the side of the ship. Adding the date or a quote to the side of the ship made out of a cardboard is a nice touch too.

Decorate or paint the interior and exterior of the ship. Children enjoy painting cardboard ships with brushes, stamps or even finger-paint. Children can also use sponges, markers, crayons, or chalk to decorate their ship. The cardboard can also be painted with spray paint to cover large areas fast or puffy paint to create dimensional designs.

Sew or glue buttons on the ship for decoration or glue shells shells on the ship to represent the barnacles that are often found on the hulls of real ships. Children can also color shells or fish printable cutouts to attach, glue or sew on the ship.