Half a Hundred Acre Wood

Christian homeschooling integrating Classical and Charlotte Mason principles

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Thanks to 4-H, our children have been a bit obsessed about turning trash into treasure. (And here I thought we’d need a cow and a chicken to join 4-H two years ago! Boy, was I wrong!)

Instead of raising farm animals this spring, we’ve collected trash to transform it into… other stuff.  In fact, I have one child who doesn’t want me to throw anything away right now because he can just envision the treasure it might become.

This post was meant to be a tutorial, but in hindsight, it’s really just a way for our family to capture the memory. (But perhaps someone out there can decipher these instructions and photos and figure out how to do it? Surely it will help someone who is in a desperate position to turn some trash into a… marionette?)

Introducing… A Trashman Marionette

Because we always end up tweaking our project designs during construction, the above photo is… not what you need.  Instead, gather the following supplies:

  • Wrapping paper tube
  • 2 dowel rods or paint sticks
  • 1 empty ovaltine container (or similar empty plastic container or sturdy box)
  • 5 empty water bottles
  • 1 empty Philadelphia Cream Cheese container (or similar container)
  • 4 buttons
  • 18 paper clips
  • 12 milk jug caps
  • Masking Tape
  • Duct Tape

Instructions (sort-of-kind-of, if you use your imagination for the photos that should have been taken in-between…  Why do I always forget to take photos?)

Cut wrapping paper tube into 8 sections.  Wrap each in desired color of duct tape.  Wrap Ovaltine container with desired color of duct tape.

Making the legs and feet, arms and hands:  Cut bottoms off of water bottles about 1 inch from end. Cover two with black duct tape. These are the feet. Cover two others with masking tape as shown below.  These are the hands.  (We cut a section out of the plastic to make a separate thumb.)  Tape each tape-wrapped hand or foot onto the respective paper towel tubes.

Making the elbow and knee joints:  Punch a hole in the center of each milk jug lid. Straighten and then bend a paper clip (paper clip #1) in half and feed it through a milk jug cap, leaving a loop on the underside to feed another bent paperclip (paper clip #2) through. Thread the two ends of paper clip #2 through another milk jug lid and bend ends outwards, trim with wire cutters (or scissors) and tape in place.

Repeat this process 3 times, for a total of 4 joints (for elbows and knees).  Insert the milk jug lids into the legs and arms. In our case, the milk jug lids fit perfectly inside the wrapping paper tubes.
Attaching the legs to the body:  Punch two holes into the Ovaltine container for the legs.  Straighten and then bend a paper clip (paper clip #1) in half and feed it through a milk jug cap, leaving a loop on the underside to feed another bent paperclip (paper clip #2) through. Thread the two ends of paper clip #2 through one of the holes in the Ovaltine container and bend the ends outwards and tape in place inside the container.

You’ll repeat that step to attach the arms to the body.

The head:  We covered the cream cheese container with masking tape and glued on four buttons (2 eyes, a nose, and a mouth) to make a face.

The hat:  We covered the lid in black duct tape, along with the bottom of the fifth water bottle, and taped it together to look like a top hat.

Attaching the head to the body:  Again, we poked a hole in the center of the Ovaltine lid and in the center of the cream cheese container; straightened and then bent paperclips to thread through each as we did with the milk jug lids.

Finally… it was time to glue the paint sticks together and measure off the amount of string needed for the arms and the legs to hang freely.  We poked a whole through the feet and hands, threaded the string through each and tied it off, and then tied the strings to the paint stick.

The strings connecting to the hands are tied off to the stick in front, and the legs are tied to the stick that’s perpendicular to that one.

So, there you have it!  A totally confusing tutorial on how to build a trashman marionette.  But if we end up needing to make another one, perhaps this will jog our memories…


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