Recycled Cardboard Animals DIY

Teaching children about the balance of our delicate ecosystem is so important. So, to help you start the conversation with your kids, we’ve created this fun cardboard animal DIY for you to follow! Why not combine fun and learning whilst building your own wildlife animals together?

To get started, all you’ll need is a pair of scissors, a pencil, and some cardboard. If you know what animal you’d like to create, you can start by drawing a simple outline onto cardboard. You don’t need to be too picky because you can add details later with a bit of paint!

The idea here is to keep your shapes super simple! We created animal shapes to loosely represent each of our wildlife animals, and then created “U” shaped legs which could be slotted into place via two slits we’d cut into each body shape.

And now it’s painting time! We used acrylic paint in colours that matched the animals’ natural appearance. Of course, if you want to spice things up a bit and create a purple elephant or a blue giraffe, go ahead! Once the base coats have dried, you can go in with a thin-bristled brush to add all those fun extra details like the giraffe’s spots.

Once you’ve finished painting your cardboard animals and they’ve had time to dry, you can finally piece them together for the final result!

And voila! You’ll have yourself a herd of wild animals in no time. These guys look great sat on a shelf next to children’s books, or even strung by some string and turned into a mobile.

Did you enjoy this DIY? Take a look at our other DIYs for more great ideas for kids!

And don’t forget to share your creations with us on Instagram! Tag @babysits and show off your wildlife animals.