Kids & Family

Make an appliance box fort

Make an appliance box fort

It’s no secret to kids that a big cardboard box is the best play fort you can have. Find a washing machine box on the curb, drag it home: instant fun. If you want some amenities, such as a drawbridge door or firing slits, you need to put a little extra work into it.
I’ve embellished ours in the past with everything from a Swiss Army knife to a box cutter. Turns out, a Dremel Multi-Max is a much easier, more controllable tool for this than anything I’ve tried. Add some good fasteners and there’s no limit to the size and complexity of the cardboard castles you can
construct.

How-To: Make an inverting top

An inverting or tippe top is a classic physics toy: a spinning top that spontaneously inverts itself to spin on its handle at high speed, then rolls back over onto its base when it stops. Turns out, four spheres joined in a close-packed tetrahedron will do the same thing, and this quick video tutorial from YouTuber VTK9990 shows one made from four marbles and some epoxy. [via The Automata / Automaton Blog]