How to Build a Medieval Castle for Kids From Home

The battlements are a basic feature of medieval castles.

A medieval castle can be highly important to children who desire appropriate scenery when playing with toy knights, but commercially available castles can be costly. Cost does not have to keep you from treating your children to the joy of owning a pretend castle. You can make a homemade castle. All you need to create a cardboard structure is cheap materials you can easily find at home or at your local stationary store. Children can use the castle to house their medieval battles, and if a part, or even the whole structure, is destroyed by accident or during play you can easily replace it at a low cost.

Things You'll Need

• Shoe box
• Oil paint
• Utility knife
• Scissors
• String
• Thin cardboard
• Ruler
• Compass

Instructions

1. Remove the lid from the shoe box; the bottom of the box will be the castle's floor and the sides will be the structure's four walls. Choose a box with a non-glossy surface, so that paint will adhere to the surface. On one of the long walls, use the utility knife to cut an arched drawbridge.

2. Poke small holes on the sides of the drawbridge and the adjacent wall using the utility knife's edge. Thread a piece of string through each side's door and wall holes and tie a knot on both ends of the string. The pieces of string must be long enough, so that the drawbridge can drop freely.

3. Form the battlements around the top of the castle's walls with a pair of scissors. To do this, cut out successive squares on the edge of the box's four sides. Do not form embrasures -- openings in a crenellation -- within two inches of each corner.

4. Measure the height of the box's sides. Create four cylinders out of thin cardboard, measuring 2 inches in diameter and being 1/3 taller than the castle's walls. Use a utility knife to cut out a window on each cylinder.

5. Draw four circles -- measuring 4 inches in diameter -- on thin cardboard, using a compass. Cut them out and remove a quadrant, so that the circles all have a quarter wedge removed. Pull the straight sides of the wedge together to form a cone and use sticky tape to hold the shape.

6. Apply glue on the top rim of each cylinder and attach a cone on each of the four cylinders to complete the towers.

7. Paint the castle and the cylinders using grey oil paint, as markers won't effectively cover the writing on the shoe box.

8. Apply glue on the inside walls of the castle's corners. Place one tower on each corner of the castle, with the window facing outwards, to complete the craft.

References

• Enchanted Learning: Cardboard Box Castle
• Family Fun: The Great Cardboard Castle
• Neilos: How to Make Cones

Resources

• Storm the Castle: Make a Paper and Cardboard Medieval Castle