A Little Red Cardboard Barn

We've finished our farm unit and are moving on to a new theme tomorrow - but before we do I wanted share the barn we made.

The wooden farm animals came with a beautiful handmade ark that we gave Big Buddy for Christmas a couple years ago.  I would someday love to have a wood barn but it's currently not in the budget. So in the mean time we decided to improvise and make our own. 

I stumbled upon this perfectly sized milk box (4 gallons per box) while subbing and thought it would be sturdy enough to handle play. Hubandie and the boys used an x-acto knife and wood glue to build a barn shape.

to get the doors to fold out hubandie used an x-acto
knife and scored the inside of the cardboard

We then painted with a basic primer and outlined a window and a door with painters tape.

cardboard is very porous so priming is a must if you want decent coverage

Big Buddy however insisted that we add more windows so it looked like the barn in our book The Big Red Barn. He even brought the book over so we'd know exactly how to do it :) 

Once everything was taped I let the boys paint the barn with rollers and washable, red tempera paint.

The boys really enjoyed working together and broke out in to fits of giggles several times.

We let the red paint dry and then Big Buddy used a foam brush and washable, black tempera paint to do the roof.

Mini Man doesn't believe in staying in lines yet so we did this
while he napped :)

When all the paint was dry we pulled off the tape...

And started enjoying our brand new toy.

Even though we are done with our farm unit, this will be on our playroom shelves for awhile.  It's not wood or super fancy but the fact they had such hand in its creation, makes it very special. 

Please check out our farm unit for more farm fun learning ideas. You can also find lots more units and crafts on our homeschool page.