Cardboard Aquarium

This week we made a cardboard aquarium to replace 

the one that fell apart months ago. 

We used a big diaper box and cut windows out of the 

two biggest sides and stuck clear cellophane on the 

inside of the box. We used what we had in the house, 

but if I were making this again, I would make two changes. 

One, I would not use irridescent cellophane. Or any 

cellophane, which rips at the slightest touch by infants. 

But especially not irridescent, which gives one a headache 

just peering through the "glass". I'd use thin, clear vinyl, 

or at least the clear plastic used to wrap schoolbooks. 

Two, I'd open up the box and lay it flat to stick on 

the vinyl/plastic panes. Much easier.

At the top of the box, we attached a handle for carrying 

the aquarium around. For feeding access, we also cut a 

trapdoor with a little hole in it, so little fingers could 

easily open it and provide sustenance for fishy friends.

Some little fingers, however, preferred to 

share fish food with the outdoor rug

and spy on the fish through the trapdoor instead

while other little fingers (and their owners) thought 

any hole in the box qualified as feeding access.

Oh well, sometimes adult-initiated design fails.

For the fish, we consulted one of our 

scuba reference books: 

and drew up some two-sided creatures on 

construction paper, which the girls decorated

along with generic seaweed and shells. The bottom-

rooted living things were glued to the floor of 

the aquarium and the free-swimming fish were suspended 

from the roof with invisible thread/beading microfilament/

fishing line/regular white sewing thread and masking tape. 

We stuck starfish directly onto the "glass" panes with 

dabs of glue. The top of the box was then taped down 

with masking tape and scrap paper was cut up into 

small pieces to be fish food. We chose not to hot-glue 

the top shut to give us the option of reopening the box 

to add more fish when we felt up to drawing more. 

When the box gets too full of fish food, we tip the 

box on its side so the food comes out of the 

side handle-holes and reuse the food.

For a full-size aquarium idea, check out Filth Wizardry's 

coral reef post and her incredible line art aquatic 

creatures templates. My computer (Bad Computer! 

Bad Computer!) refused to size her templates properly, 

or I would have had my kids color those instead!