Sound Boxes

So to work on Wingnuts listening skills, I made some sound boxes. You can buy commercial ones but they were too expensive. I tried just using containers but my inquisitive boy kept opening them and dumping the contents out. So I decided if I was to leave them on the shelf for him I would have to make some that he could not open. In case anyone else wanted to make some I took photos of how I did it.

I first cut five toilet paper rolls in half and then trimmed them down to be two inches tall.



I then traced the rolls on some paper to make twenty circles.



I then took Mod Podge and some fabric and decoupaged it to the paper. Make sure your drawn circle are on the back and not under the glued on fabric. That way you will be able to cut the circles out If you have never decoupaged, you just put some of the glue down first then lay your fabric on top. Then you spread some more glue on top.



When dry cut out your circles leaving a 1/4 inch edge around the circle.



Then take an exacto knife and score around the circle on the paper side. Be careful to not go all the way through. Then cut out little wedges all around the edge making sure to stop at the line. I found it helpful to make little ‘V’ marks with the exacto knife so that I would not go to far when cutting the wedges out.Then fold your eds up. Then I glued the bottoms on to the rolls.





I then added my fillers. I used little white beans, lentils, barley, rice, and kosher salt. If I was to do this again I would not use barley, it sounds very close to the rice. There is a difference but it is really slight.

Then I glued the tops onto the rolls.



Next I cut out 2″ x 5 3/4″ strips of fabric to go around the rolls.



I then decoupaged it on. Put some glue on the roll and spread it out.







Lay the fabric down and continue putting glue on and wrapping the fabric around.







Then a layer of the glue to the outside of the fabric.



The completed rolls.





I am going to set out just one color to begin with so he can just have fun shaking them. Then I will switch it out to just three, the loudest, middle and softest ones. And let him start matching the blue to the red.



March 10th, 2010 | Filed under School, WingNut.