Homemade Stilts Activity

Help Little Miss Barnum & Bailey defy gravity.

Submitted by
Sonam Adinolf

Your kid wants to join the circus. But while she's envisioning bright lights and fancy costumes, you're envisioning a flying trapeze accident on the swing set and toy elephants trampling your herb garden. Put together this easy pair of stilts and give her a taste of life under the Big Top, without risking getting clown face paint all over the carpet.

A circus performer:
Your kid. Star-spangled leotard and bright blue top hat are optional.
Take-out soup containers:
Wonton soup anyone? For sturdier stilts, try coffee cans. (We would have said that first, but who makes coffee from the can anymore? Starbucks anyone?) Big stewed tomato cans work, too!
String, ribbon or twine:
Get the thick stuff.
A hammer
A nail

Have your kid rinse out the soup containers while you grab the hammer and nail.
Flip the containers upside down and use the hammer and nail to punch two small holes on opposite sides of the bottom. (Avoid injuring your kid's all-important, stilt-controlling hands and do the nailing yourself.)
Cut two long pieces of string, each about 6 feet long.
Thread the string through the holes in the container, going from outside the container to inside.
Gently pull up on the string (without pulling it out of the holes) to gauge how long you need them to be. These are what your kid will hold on to while she's stilt-walking, so they should come up to about her waist.
Knot the end of each string on the inside of the container and trim off any excess.
Hand off the new stilts to your kid and get her to step up on the containers, pull up on the strings and let her walk around (or clomp around) the house.
Before you know it, she'll be threatening to run off to join the circus—and she'll actually have a marketable skill for the Big Top!