Thursday, April 19, 2012

Cardboard Slide


When I was a child, the church I attended had an annual harvest festival in the fall. The activity I loved best at this festival was the cardboard slide they created down one of the church's staircases every year. When I received a large box the other day, I knew that I had to share this idea with my own children.

I flattened out the box and placed it over the stairs and at first, my kids raced cars and balls down the slide.


Then they tried sliding down the cardboard themselves and they were hooked!


Like my old church used to do, if you tape the top of the cardboard down with some duct tape, the slide should stay put for quite a while. My kids didn't want the slide to be so permanent so we skipped this part. The slide slipped a little every time my kids went down it, but it still held strong.

If you happen to have a couple of large appliance boxes, you can just open the tops and bottoms of the boxes and tape and lay the boxes end to end down the stairs like my church did. This turns the boxes into a really fun tube slide! Give it a try!

31 comments:

  1. Fun!!!

    P.s. my daughter has a patch too :)

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  2. Fun! I'm curious as to how they get back up.

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    1. Hi there! Sorry I didn't respond sooner; my computer wasn't letting me comment for some reason... :P

      Anyway, since the slide wasn't taped down, we just flipped the whole thing against the wall and the kids scurried back up. No tricks, just temporary slide removal!

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  3. How fun! Can't wait to try this!

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  4. You are one cool parent!! Love the idea!

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  5. so much fun!! found your blog via pinterest! Hope you don't mind if I follow along :)

    www.twopinktutus.blogspot.com

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    1. by all means, follow along! happy to have you! :)

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  6. This is great but please cover the spindles too!!! Wouldn't want to have to make a x-ray run

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    1. You're probably right... we've definitely had our fair share of ER visits!

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  7. You definitely win parent of the year for this! I would have lost my mind if this happened in my house as a kid! I took to sliding down the stairs in a sleeping bag instead! =)

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  8. how do they get back up??

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    1. this was exactly what I thought when i saw this

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    2. We didn't tape our slide down, we just flipped the whole thing against the wall and the kids ran back up again. It seemed to hold up just fine for us that way, but my kids are pretty light. Tape is probably a necessity for heavier kids.

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  9. We had a cot mattress which we slid down the stairs on....lots of fun too

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  10. We would go together. We had an old fitted sheet and the first person would put their feet in the corner, then everyone else sat behind them on the sheet and held on to the person in front of them, and slide! We called it tobogganing.

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  11. This is awesome! (And only one helicopter type comment so far- yay!) Growing up in San Francisco, the neighborhood kids and I did cardboard sleds down the steep hill behind our homes. Wasn't killed even once and what a rush! This has got to be the next best thing.

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  12. Fold the left side over slightly to acces the stairs to go back up.

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  13. this looks like a lot of fun ~ thanks for sharing :)

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  14. IM GONNA BE THEIR FAVOURITE PARENT HAHAAA!! :P

    Doesn´t the cardboard yield under their weight? :/

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  15. I love that you let THEM figure out what they wanted to do with the slide. :D

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  16. Didn't work for me :( I didn't have any really big boxes so I guess my boxes weren't sturdy enough. They just slid down the stairs with him.

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    1. Hmmmn... I don't know, maybe the boxes had some bends in them? I know that the slide works best with giant refrigerator boxes since they are nice and flat all the way down. I think I got lucky with the box I used just because my kids are pretty light.

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  17. we did this today. saw it on pinterest. we had a bunch of pillows and couch cushions at the bottom for a soft landing. awesome!!!

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    1. Yes, pillows and cushions are a great idea! Protect those little tushies!

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  18. Love it! This is the first time I've wished that our stairs weren't hardwood! ;) Great way to have fun with those large appliances boxes before they get recycled!

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    1. Thanks for showing me the upside to not having hardwood stairs! :)

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  19. I found your blog via Pinterest. I must say, what a neat idea! Maybe I will get to implement someday.

    It reminds me of a project that my Youth group did one summer called "Ice Sledding". The leaders froze huge blocks of ice and we used them to sled down a large hill. It worked really well.

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