Round Trip Ticket to Millipede Level
How fun would it be to ride on the Subterranean Subway with Sneaky the Squirrel and go deep underground in winter to visit a fantastic magical millipede city? Well we can’t really ride the subway but we sure can create one to play with.
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We used an old candy box shaped like a sleigh but you can use any cardboard box of any size. You can decorate it and add windows by cutting out squares. You can glue or tape clear cling wrap for the windows or leave them open. If they are open your riders will get that much more muddy!
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While making our subway we talked about what the subway riders would look like, what they might wear and where they would be going. You can draw your own millipedes, termites and ants and give them outfits and great seats on the subway.
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The earthworms who pull the subway trains in our story have no eyes so we wrapped brown pipe cleaners together to make them. You can use any sticks or twine to build the cables used to move the trains. We used glitter sticks from another project.
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The most fun we had was driving our subway around the yard and yelling out stops like “Millipede Level and the Theater District.” Make up some fun stops of your own! Check out our recipe section to see what today’s special is at the Compost Cafe!
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For our second art project we used a very large bamboo stalk. Bamboo grows in our garden and makes a good body for a millipede because it is round and also divided into segments like a real millipede. If you recall from Under the Lights of Bugway, our main millipede character, Saxby, has sixty legs in each body segments. We covered our bamboo in brown felt, added pipe cleaner legs and some fun google eyes and sent him into the city. We had a backdrop of New York City, but you can draw your own buildings and city skyline.
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If you’d like to make Saxby or any other millipede character from the story you can use any round piece of wood, a broom perhaps? Taping together a few paper towel rolls also works. You can make your millipede large or small depending on what materials you construct it with. Add on some arms and decide what fun to have! Maybe you will build the next great millipede inventor or performer!
