FireFighter 3rd Birthday Party: DIY Cardboard Firetruck

Ever since we visited our local Fire Station a year and a half ago, Onetime has been obsessed with all things firefighting.  It was a given when he turned 3 that we would have a FireFighter themed birthday party for him.  In this special 4-part series, we will be sharing how we celebrated Onetime’s special day in a hands-on way!

In today’s post, you will find out how to make a cardboard firetruck for pretend party play.

In part 2, you will find all the other awesome hands-on play activities we did including a fire fighting felt board, firefighter playdough, and a firefighting themed rice sensory bin.

In part 3, you will find instructions for the arts and crafts projects that we did: open-ended firefighting-inspired painting, and a fire-themed lantern.

In part 4, we will be sharing our special firefighting cookie and cupcake recipes, along with ideas for favours.

Let’s begin!

To encourage some good old-fashioned pretend play, each guest was given a firefighting hat, “hose” and badge when they arrived.  As you can see, our hoses were just balloon pumps.  We found red ones at the dollar store and they were perfect!

What good is a FireFighter without a truck?  So – I made one!

To make the truck, we got 2 extra-large moving boxes from Home Depot and attached them together using red duct tape – one on its side and the other standing up.  Next, we cut a door out on either side of the front, windows in the doors and front, and took the top off the box at the back so the kids could get in and out of the truck from the back.

Onetime helped me make the truck and he had a great time decorating the inside with a marker to draw all the dials, steering wheel, buttons etc.

After our truck was built, I painted it using acrylic paints.  First, I did a coat of white to cover all the words/logos on the boxes and then a couple coats of red acrylic.

We used silver duct tape to make the stripe, and cut out black construction paper circles for the wheels. We made the lights with circles of gold glitter fun foam and put a silver glitter fun foam license plate on the back.

For the light on top, we took an empty see-through plastic container that we bought 100 blank CDs in and covered it with pieces of tissue paper using glue.  Inside, we placed one of those little electric candles that you get around Halloween for putting inside pumpkins.

I know this sounds like a lot of work, and it was – but I really enjoy doing this kind of thing and Onetime was involved in the whole process and got a lot out of it.

If you didn’t want to go to all the work of painting, it would be easy enough to cover the truck with large pieces of red construction paper instead. I don’t think kids really need all the glitz to enjoy the truck.

At the party, the firetruck was a huge success!  All the kids piled in and drove themselves to emergency after emergency! It was LOUD and FUN! And they didn’t stop MOVING!

It was SO worth it to make this truck for the party.  It was the highlight of our celebration, and Onetime played with the truck for weeks before his party and after (until I grudgingly put it out to recycle!)

That’s it for today.  Hope I’ve inspired you to create your own firetruck at home for hours of fun fire fighting pretend play!

If you’re looking for even more firefighting ideas, be sure to check out our FireFighting Pinterest board at: Follow One Time Through’s board Fire Fighter Theme on Pinterest.

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Best,