Egg carton fire truck craft

Today we’re sharing a fun recycled fire truck craft for kids. 

It’s amazing how a humble egg carton combined with a few bottle caps and paper rolls can become a DIY toy for imaginative play. Best of all, this egg carton fire truck is eco-friendly, being made from biodegradable and recycled materials.

At the end of this article are some useful links for how you can help support the current bushfire crisis happening in Australia.

This craft was originally created in 2013 and has been updated and reshared for today’s audience.

It’s been so hard to watch the destruction and chaos caused by Australia’s bushfires this Summer. Sadly, the fires are still burning and the season is only half over.

This kind of disaster understandably generates widespread fear and anxiety in people and also in our kids. It leaves us feeling helpless because aside from donating to the cause, there’s nothing we can do to change the situation or to stop the fires from happening. 

So far this time around we’ve been fortunate enough to only get a lot of smoke but no fires in our immediate area, although some massive fires have been burning in neighbouring regions which can always be nerve-wracking. Even the smell of bushfire smoke strikes a raw nerve after a family experience a few years ago.

Our bushfire experience

This egg carton fire truck is something I created with my girls last time bushfires affected our community, which was back in 2013.

Fire had destroyed over 50 homes in the street I grew up in, where my parents still lived. 

At the time the fire struck my Mum and Dad were at home and managed to save their property by putting out spot fires with buckets of water and the garden hose. They were some of the lucky ones that day.

My girls (then pre-school aged) had seen the burned down wreckages of homes on the street their Gran and Poppy lived in on TV and in person. They’d walked past melted garbage bins and letterboxes, seen the blackened shells of cars still parked in driveways and smelled the overwhelming stench of ash and ruins.

They’d also packed their own bags full of favourite toys in case we needed to evacuate ourselves (which we did later that week). They’d woken up daily to the smell of smoke, the sound of helicopters hauling water and the wail of sirens flying up the highway.

They didn’t complain, but it was frightening for us and also would have been for them.

This egg carton fire truck is something that came from not being able to get bushfires off our minds. Somehow, in a small way, including fire trucks and the putting out of fires in imaginary play helped. 

Of course, you don’t need a bushfire disaster to make a fire truck craft – you can make one any time!

How to make an egg carton fire truck craft

You will need:

• An egg carton
• Red, white and black paint
• PVA (school) Glue
• 2 Bamboo Skewers
• 1 Toilet roll, cut in half
• 2 Shoelaces
• 4 plastic milk bottle caps and 2 beer bottle caps
• Scissors, brushes, and a metal skewer for piercing holes in the wheels

How to:

Cut the egg carton in half lengthways so it’s in two pieces, then cut the flat piece in two at about a third of the way along.

Cut the pointy bits off the part with the egg cups and reserve 2 of these for the lights.

Cut the long flap off the side and reserve for the ladder and bumper bar.

Paint most of the egg carton red as shown in this picture, but paint the side on the smaller flat part white for a windscreen.

Paint the long flap parts white for the ladder and bumper and the two toilet roll pieces white.

Once dry, draw in detail with a marker.