How to Make a Kaleidoscope

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This post is sponsored by Pebbles Cereal. All ideas, opinions, and hot glue burns are my own. 🙂

During the Summer we don’t usually take a lot of vacations, but we do a lot of fun projects around the house. You don’t need a ton of supplies to make fun crafts with your kids; many are made with things you find lying around. Check out how to make a kaleidoscope out of things you already have in your house!

You will Need

Box of Fruity Pebbles Cereal
Empty paper towel tube (or similar)
Plastic Clamshell (From Produce)
Plastic Beads (see through works best)
Aluminum foil or Reflective Contact Paper
Sharpie Marker
Scissors
Hot Glue Gun
Fun wrapping paper (Optional)
Colorful Duct Tape (optional)
Ruler

How to

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First, we are going to disassemble our Fruity Pebbles Cereal box. Remove the bag of Fruity Pebbles, we are going to use some later, and flatten out the cereal box.

Turn the box over to the ugly side. We are going to cut a rectangle that is 1 inch shorter than your paper towel tube, and 3 inches wide. I cut mine to 10 inches by 3 inches. Now make a mark at every inch across the top and bottom. Use your ruler to help you create and straight edge and fold it lengthwise into thirds as shown.

Now, make a mark at every inch across the top and bottom. Use your ruler to help you create and straight edge and fold it lengthwise into thirds as shown.

Next step to make a kaleidoscope, cover your folded cereal box rectangle with the reflective contact paper or foil. If you are using foil wrap it around both sides tightly and as smoothly as possible. You may need to use some adhesive to stick it down.

Fold it into a triangle and slide it right down into your paper towel tube.

Now grab your clear plastic clamshell produce container. Trace the open end of the paper towel tube on a flat spot on the plastic with your sharpie. Cut it out. You are going to need two of these plastic circles. Cut them, so they are just small enough to fit into the paper towel tube.

Place one of the circles into the end of the tube. Push it in, so it lays flat against the triangular box inside. You can secure this with some hot glue around the edges.

On the same end of the kaleidoscope that you just put the plastic, fill in some clear beads and some Fruity Pebbles Cereal. The beads and cereal are going to create the design inside your Kaleidoscope later on. I suggest filling this about 3/4 of the way full.

We are going to take the second plastic circle and carefully cover the edges with hot glue. Place it on the end of the tube to contain the beads and cereal. Make sure it is sealed the entire way around.

Finally, we are going to cut a piece of the cereal box into a circle to fit the other end. Punch or cut a hole directly in the center and hot glue it to the opposite end of the tube from the beads.

You can choose to wrap your Kaleidoscope in wrapping paper or let your child decorate it with markers and stickers.

Since we did wrapping paper, I took some colorful duct tape and wrapped the front and back edges to help keep the paper on and reinforce the ends.

How to Make a Kaleidoscope Results

So, was taking the time to make a kaleidoscope worth it? It was! My daughter is in love! She loves how colorful it is. She loves that we used recycled materials to make it, and she LOVES that her favorite cereal is inside.

I tried my best to get a picture of the inside so you can see just how well this works. This picture doesn’t do this homemade kaleidoscope justice. It is beautiful inside!