William’s cardboard candy dispenser

During the summer, William showed me a video on YouTube and said: “I want to make one of these. Will you help me?”

And with that, Project Candy was launched.

It has taken a while as we had to acquire plenty of cardboard boxes as well as a glue gun that an eight-year old can manage as well as assorted other building materials. But, this weekend, we completed the the candy machine, loaded it up, and it worked.

Or it did until the cat kicked it off a shelf today.

Given that he’s eight, I am both surprised and impressed at how well he has stuck with this. The process has been a bit piecemeal — we do a bit, leave it for a week, and then come back and do a bit more. But the project was never abandoned and, especially when we started seeing things coming together he became increasingly keen to complete the machine.

I have been surprised to learn that there is quite a variety of cardboard constructions being built on YouTube and, now that William is happy handling both a Stanley knife and a glue gun, he wants to build a safe.