Monday, June 14, 2010

Aliens


Some little aliens came to visit today in their flying saucers.

We used
  • Circular cream cheese box
  • Plastic thing that tomatoes come in (or stocking eggs or similar)
  • Popsicle sticks/short dowels
  • Glue
  • Paint
  • Scissors

First we separated the cover from the base of the box and
cut a hole in the cover. The hole was slightly smaller than
the plastic tomato-case thingy:

Then we cut slits in the base of the box and
pushed the popsicle sticks in:

Then we roughly assembled everything (no glue)
to check that they would fit the aliens

before taking out the sticks, peeling off the label,
and painting the boxes.


While the paint was drying, we made the aliens:

We also cut strips of scrap cardboard and glued them
into rings for car seats. These had to fits smugly but
not too tightly around the aliens so they wouldn't
topple while the flying saucers were in motion:

When the paint on the boxes were dry, we glued the
plastic tomato-case thingies over the hole to make cockpits:

One of these plastic covers was too low for the alien,
so we raised it with little squares of cardboard
around the rim of the hole:

Then we stuck the popsicle sticks back into
the slits and glued them in place.

Mom Alien's flying saucer was the family vehicle -

we popped the lid back on the box and
she was ready to go shopping.

Dad Alien's spacecraft was more sports-car-ish -

a snazzy little one-seater that took him to work each morning.

Later we got out our little box of circuit gizmos and added
some LED headlamps that the kids could turn on and
off with a press-switch in the back.

Just for fun, we added another LED inside the flying
saucer itself (husband's idea) to light up the cockpit.
If I had more of those little button batteries like I
used for the headlamps, I'd have made this light a
permanent feature, but it was powered with clunky
AA batteries -very unaerodynamic. So out it came.

A very lovely, normal, civilized alien family.

Quite unlike
those other bloodthirsty savages
we met some time back.

17 comments:

  1. wow...that's very creative....awesome

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  2. Perfect for the song "5 little men in their flying saucers, flew round the world one day.... " - I'm going to buy some laughing cow cheese!

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  3. Fantastic! Seth and I made a space ship this last week too. However, ours doesn't have little green alien or lights, but it does fly like a frisbee so that's something.

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  4. I love these aliens, and their ships! You have three very lucky daughters =)

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  5. Really nice flying saucer !! you always have so many great ideas...

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  6. These are fantastic! My 3yr-old daughter is fascinated with all things rockets, spaceships, etc and would have a blast with this! Thanks so much for sharing your creativity.

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  7. These are fantastic! My 3yr-old daughter is fascinated with all things rocket, spaceship, etc. and would definitely have a blast with these! Just one quick question - did you use plain old elmer's glue or was there a hot glue gun involved?

    Thanks for sharing your creativity!

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  8. yet another AMAZING craft project!

    Makes me want to go out and buy groceries just to have the right pieces on hand. :)

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  9. I love those little green aliens!

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  10. Great work. You are a super creative mom! I bet it's a lot of fun to be a kid at your house :)

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  11. Could you please tell me how to add the lights? It would so add extra marks on my project!

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  12. how did you make the aliens? i love them good job too

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  13. This is fantastic. This is my first time viewing your site. I Love it!

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