Navigate the nocturnal highways with this fantastic vehicular nightlight, complete with convenient carrying handle!
We recommend Night Light by Nicholas Blechman (Orchard Books, 2013). A charming blend of numbers, vehicles, and a guessing game, the book flips between night and day. The solid black pages only reveal the dotted lights of a vehicle, along with a textual clue (ex: “5 lights, cleaning day and night?”). Following each night page is a day page in which the identity of the vehicle is revealed. Fantastically fun.
You’ll need:
- 1 small box with a lid (we used a tea box)
- Construction paper
- A box cutter
- White printer paper, tracing paper, wax paper, or parchment paper
- 1 submersible LED light (or glow stick)
- Scissors, tape and glue for construction
- Markers for decorating
First, use construction paper to turn a small box into your favorite vehicle. Marissa did a twine carrying handle on her awesome VW van, but you can also make a handle out of construction paper or a pipe cleaner. Next, use a box cutter to create a pair of headlights at one end of the box. Inside the box, tape a piece of white printer paper, tracing paper, wax paper, or parchment paper over the headlight holes. This gives the headlights a nice diffuse glow.
We used a submersible LED to light Marissa’s van. You can find them in the floral section of Michaels craft store – 9 cost $21, but I always use a 40% off coupon.
If the LEDs are too pricey, a glow stick will do the trick. Drop the illumination of your choice in the vehicle box, close the lid, and you’re done. Vroom vroom vroom!
First, crinkle up brown packing or wrapping paper. Then arch it over the top of the base and secure to the sides and back of with tape. We taped a strip of crinkled paper to the front of the base as well.
Now, for the inside! We made a half a toilet paper tube bear (with a 
Ready for some artwork? Cut the frames from the template, draw some pictures, and attach your artwork to the walls of the cave with 
To make things extra fun, we turned off the lights during the fire construction portion of the program. It was so cute to see these little illuminated caves on all the tables. But here’s the cave that completely captured my heart…this bear is roasting a marshmallow!
Some wild and crazy vowels are on the loose, and you must grab your magnetic fishing rod and catch AEIOU…and sometimes…that mysteriously elusive Y.
Push the unattached end of the string against the pole, and cover it with color masking tape. Continue wrapping the pole until you’ve created a 3″ handle. If you’d like, use the color masking tape to decorate the rest of the pole.
Finally, tape a magnet to the paper clip. We used little ceramic block magnets. Since these were potential choking hazards for younger siblings, we checked, double checked, and triple checked to make sure everyone’s magnet was firmly taped in place.
Next up, the VOWELS! Cut the vowels out of the 2-page template. You can use just markers to decorate them, or you can do what we did and bring out the 
When you’re done decorating, tape a jumbo paperclip to the back of each letter. Spread the vowels on the floor, take a few steps back, and try “hooking” them with your rod.
Check out Mr. Expert Fisherman…3 on 1 hook! Nice!
The letter Y is on the template, but at our story time, we decided to do something a little special with it. We traced the Ys onto gold 
Then, as kids were fishing, we quietly dropped the golden Ys into their pile of vowels. If they caught the Y, they got to take it home (and of course, everyone caught the Y)!