Preschool Project of the Week – Binoculars from toilet paper rolls

I have been a preschool teacher for 8 years and I have a three year old son. Each week I will share an idea with you that I have used at school and/or at home. Learning can be fun for preschoolers and it’s important that they learn to love learning at a young age! Check out this week’s idea:

Preschool Project of the Week – Reusing empty toilet paper rolls to make binoculars
Preschool Skills: fine motor (painting), to learn about “reusing” items for other purposes, and exploration, discovery, imaginative/role play (from using them!)

Take two clean, empty toilet paper rolls and glue together.  I have used, Elmers School Glue, Rubber Cement and Hot Glue.  Hot Glue holds up the best.  Clamp then with clothespins (like in the picture) and let sit overnight.  Use a hole punch to punch a hole on each side to string them together.

Let your child paint the binoculars (if you leave the clothespins on while they are painting, they can use them to hold on to so they can paint all the way around the binoculars without getting paint on their hands!)  You can paint them any color you want.  At school, we paint them silver to make the more realistic (I realize black is probably the most realistic, but black is no fun!).  I used silver paint from the craft department.

After they dry, knot an end of yarn through each hole.

Optional: You can decorate the binoculars with stickers, glitter, etc.

When we make these at school, we do it during the week in the spring when we talk about “Taking care of our World” (recycling, not littering, etc.)  We talk about how we’ve taken toilet paper rolls that would be thrown away and “reused” them to make something fun.

Then we take our binoculars with us on a Nature Walk.

Since Bug is all into pirates right now, the same day we painted binoculars, I let him paint an empty paper towel tube (he picked blue) to use as a “looking glass”.  :D

You can also turn paper towel tubes into airplanes.

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