Tin Can Robots

By Melissa Jordan of The Chocolate Muffin Tree

I saw this idea in a magazine and knew that we had to do this! Don’t these robots look fabulous? You’ll need some recycled goods and household items, but this is a great project because it inspires and encourages a range of creativity. These robots inspired hours of imaginative play and were fun to create!

Materials:

  • empty tin cans
  • glue (we used a hot glue gun)
  • strong disk magnets or washers
  • various hardware pieces, plastic lids, pipe cleaners, etc.

Instructions

  1. robots 1Make sure your tin cans are clean and free of sharp edges.
  2. Set up a space where your child can organize and play with all of the materials. Some children will sort them, while others might use the space to construct different faces for the robots.

    3. robots 2

  3. Glue the pieces onto the cans as you see fit. You might use a disk magnet or washer as a pupil, an eye or even a belly button. Let kids construct, deconstruct and reconstruct different robot personalities.
  4. I suggest saving your pieces! This provides a great source of fun on a rainy day.

adding hairplayingWe added metallic pipe cleaners into the scrubbers for hair and, well, you can see the rest from the pictures. You could easily add more pieces or cans!

Melissa Jordan blogs at The Chocolate Muffin Tree. She is the mother of a wonderful five-year-old daughter and a former elementary school art teacher. She loves sharing her artsy ideas with others and inspiring her readers to make things.

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