Both Nixie & Forrest have wanted to learn more about engineering this year and we've been using Blossom & Root (year 4) science curriculum. One of the first things we began learning about were simple machines (inclined planes, pulleys, wheel & axle, wedge, cranks & levers) and this has taken us on quite the journey of different projects to do alongside each of them. I love when I can find creative projects that go along with what we are learning and this Moving Cinema project was one that we did when learning about the Wheel & Axle.

I first came across this project over at Kiwi Crate and as you can see there's looks much better than ours but we still had fun making them and that's really all that matters. We made ours slightly different as we didn't have a kiwi crate to use (we used a box that a friend had given us and made our measurements accordingly). I'll share below how we went about creating them but I'm sure you'll be able to make your own with whatever box you have.

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Supplies Needed:

  • Cardboard Box
  • 2 wooden dowels (we used ones that were 30 cm long (length will depend on your box) and 6mm diameter)ced 
  • 2 toilet rolls
  • 4 round circles traced from the end of the toilet roll and cut out and then add a hole into the centre of each one
  • Paper about the width of the toilet roll and for the length it needs to be able to wrap around the toilet rolls with each being on the opposite sides so it depends on the size of your box. We used 2 A4 printer paper cut in half and taped together.
  • Thick card stock
  • Wire/Paperclip
  • Scissors
  • Hot glue gun
  • Markers/coloured pencils
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How we did it:

    1. First we got busy making the background scenes & our character using markers. Nixie wanted hers to take place in a park and Forrest wanted his to be the ocean. Nixie wanted her character to be a horse and Forrest wanted his to be a dog riding a banana.
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    2. Next, we together our wheel & axle by first gluing the round circles to the end of the toilet roll and then pushing through our wooden dowels.
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  1. Then we placed them into our box. First we made holes for the dowels to go through, it's best to keep this closer to the surface of the box and just enough away from the edge
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  2. After we had both of our wheel and axles in place we attached our background scenes and carefully taped them together. We made the mistake of not measuring our paper beforehand so ended up needing to cut some of the background scene. This part was a bit tricky. It needs to be fairly tightly taped so that the paper sits snug around the toilet rolls otherwise it won't move with it
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  3. Finally we added our character by gluing a bit of wire behind it and then making another hole in the middle of the box to line up so that the character is centred nicely. then it is time to move the dowels and watch your moving cinema in action
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