How To Make a Guitar with Kids out of recycled materials

Well… I say “how to make a guitar with kids” and a guitar we did make. But this is a musical instrument craft for kids in the most generous sense – it DOES play different notes (we will try and explain the science behind it for you over on Life At The Zoo), but clearly this will not be an instrument you will learn to play music on.

Musical Instruments — First shared in March 2013

Interestingly, we do have a real kid’s guitar and we now have this toy guitar and Red Ted loves playing with both equally. That, is what I call a result!

To make a this instrument you will need:

a container (to help make the sound resonate),
elastic bands of varying sizes and thickness,
cardboard,
a stick,
beads (optional),
tape and
hot glue gun (you may get away without the hot glue gun, but just lots of tape).

How to make a cardboard guitar (with sound)

It was really easy to make. I probably did most of it though (sorry), but the kids were involved in every step of the process and rather excited.

1) Wrap your elastic bands around your container and tape in place, so they don’t slide off whilst playing. Just to reiterate – the plastic container is a great way to help make those elastic bands REALLY resonate and make the guitar more musical.

2) Cut out a guitar shape from cardboard (we used the flap of a large box), including a hole for the strings.

3) Tape your container to the back of your cardboard. Then use a hot glue gun to help secure any remaining edges.

4) Glue your stick to your cardboard (or tape in place). We then added some pony beads as “tuners” to the guitar and glued in place with the hot glue gun.