activities

Paper Football

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The boys loved the strawplanes so much that I thought we’d try another flying craft out. We were kind of flying by the seat of our pants here but we got it to work! It’s sort of a paper cylinder but I called it a football because that’s how you throw it – like a football. I’ll show you how we made it.

We used an old manilla file, some tape, and paperclips.

We cut a strip out of the folder

Form it into a cylinder (without overlapping too much because it will throw off the balance) and tape the seam. We taped it inside and out. Looking back I would have made the cylinder smaller around to make it easier for the boys to hold. Dad did fine but the boys had trouble getting their hands around it.

Then place the paperclips on the end. The trick is making sure they are evenly spaced (again the weight issue) so we just put them all facing the same direction and touching.

That’s it! You can cut the other end into a curvy shape or decorate – or if your kids are like mine that’s just wasting time 😉

You throw it paperclip end first like a football so you’ll kind of spin it off of your hand. It actually flies fairly straight and far. Dad could throw it the best so the boys mostly tried to catch it. Then the water from the grass and the dog got a hold of it and that was that.

We talked about other things we could have made it out of (water bottles, 2L soda bottles) and how we might weight the ends but it was already late so we called it a night. Let me know if you make one differently and how it turned out!

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Allison Waken is a wife, mom of boys and Phoenix, AZ native. She has been creating inspiring content for All for the Boys since 2011. Allison loves travel, movies and spending as much time as possible with her family while she can!

5 Comments

  1. You can also make this by folding the piece of paper at one end over and over again, to replace the weight of the paper clips 🙂

  2. We actually bought something similar at the mall this weekend, but love this idea we are going to make them for my sons birthday party. We are going to use plastic folders instead because of your recommendation regarding moisture. Thank you

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