Play: Homemade Toys – Milk Jug Toss

by Tiffany · May 21, 2012

This is the next installment in our Homemade Toys series. So be sure to check out the pattern play blocks, the button spinner, and the cloth marble maze. Making toys can be a fun, cheap alternative to getting some from the store. And if you can get the kids involved, they will likely treasure it more and, thusly, enjoy it more. So win-win-win!

As with most things I do these days, this all began with a pin. And that pin, turned into this!

This milk jug toss toy was a cinch to make. And free. I love free. You can’t beat free. Well, maybe you can if someone is willing to pay you to take something. That could be better than free. But anyways, the point is, you can do this one. 🙂

So to make this, you’ll need:

– a clean milk jug (I used a quart-sized buttermilk jug)
– yarn
– exacto knife
– scissors
– scrap of cardboard
– tape
– rubberband (optional)

To start off, I began by making my yarn pom-pom. To make the pom-pom, you wrap yarn around your scrap of cardboard. The more times you go around, the fuller your pom-pom will be. So go around a lot!

Then slip the loops off of the cardboard but keep it’s shape.

Then squeezing the middle together, tie it tightly with another piece of yarn.

Insert your scissors into the loops on top and cut through. Do the same for the loops on the bottom.

Then fluff. And ta-da! You’ve got a yarn pom-pom. (As a side-note: Sebastian has started saying “ta-da!” after he does just about anything. Does that mean I say that a lot? I feel silly.)

Now on to milk jug surgery. Do you remember in the list of supplies I said that you needed a clean milk jug? Well, I really do mean clean. I thought mine was clean. I was wrong. Not a fun surprise. So before you do the next step, take the time to make sure your jug is really clean. Nothing turns the stomach quite like the sour milk smell.

It looks clean, but it soooo wasn’t. Yuk.

So now that your jug is spic-and-span clean, you can cut into it. I used a rubberband around the jug as a guide for my knife, but you can just as easily eyeball it or use a marker line as your guide. You’ll be keeping the side with the handle.

If you are a good enough cutter, you could potentially leave the edge just as it is, but since I screwed up in a few places, I decorated some masking tape and placed that around the edge. Colored duct tape or washi tape would be great for this. I didn’t have either, so I used masking tape. Just use what you’ve got.

Back to the yarn pom-pom, attach a long piece of yarn to the pom-pom. I tied it perpendicular to the yarn that I had previously tied in the middle. That way, the pom-pom is likely to stay more fluffed.

Then wrap the other end around the spout part of the half of a jug. You can either tie it, or I just wound it and screwed the cap back on. I figured, later, when Sebastian gets really good at this, I can make the yarn longer and thusly make the game harder.

And then you’re done! Now you can play!

So the object of the toy/game/whatever is to get the pom-pom in the jug just by using swinging motion while holding on to the handle. It’s a one hand game. You can start with your dominant hand, and then for added difficulty, you can switch to your non-dominant hand. It’s surprising how much of a difference that can make.