The Duck Box

For Valentine's Day our church had a little party for the younger children; all of whom were to make their own Valentine box for display and for a friendly contest. They broke them into age groups; ages 8 and younger in one group and then on up to 12 years or so in another group.

Well, Ellen just HAD to have one you know. Not that she knew anything about it...it was her mother who was rabid to make a box. About a year or so ago we found one of her little stuffed toys; a quacking duck, that had been catnapped by a stray and carried off into the hay shed; it had been mangled, but the quacker was still good in it. I took out the quacker and tossed the duck.

So I asked hubby; how would we go about making a duck Valentine box that quacked when we opened the lid? His sage answer; "I'll think on it."

Hmmm...yeah, right.

So, after a week or so of pondering, I came up with my solution to the make-it-quack issue.

Voila:

The Quacking Duck box:

Lift up on the top half of his bill firmly enough and he quacks. Here's the mechanism in back:


The box is actually just a large bleach bottle. (We specialize in those since we go through one of those huge 2 litre bottles every two weeks, for dairy use.) As you can see I just cut the top of the bottle almost off, so it would open, then cut the handle so that, when lifted, it would press on the quacker. Simple.

Ellen won a prize for creativity for her box. I felt bad at first, but then one other little guy had a 4 foot cannon box, mounted on cardboard wheels..etc, which he also won a prize for, though it was obvious that HE didn't design or make it all on his own either.

At any rate, the problem remains; how do I top this for next year?

Ha!