Material Required to Make a Circus Tent: a round bandbox and a sheet of cardboard.

Material Required to Make Circus Cages: three or four hardware boxes from three to five inches long. A booth may be made from half of a flat letter-paper box. Some cotton mosquito-netting will be the cage bars.

A circus tent is a very easy thing to make. It needs nothing but a sheet of cardboard and the lower half of a round bandbox to make it. The lower half of the bandbox must be turned over to stand upon its rims. This forms the sides of the circus tent. The roof is cut from a large circle of cardboard.

First, arrange the box to make sides for the tent. Then, cut the roof.

In the edge of the bandbox rim, cut out a piece of cardboard the shape of tent canvas looped back to make an entrance. Draw some folds upon this with blue pencil. If you prefer, use your water-color paints instead.

When this is done, glue across the top of your bandbox some strips of string to form tent ropes. The roof of the tent, round and pointed, may next be made.

Take a large sheet of cardboard and draw upon it a circle that is half again as large around as the base of your bandbox. Cut this out. Cut from the circle a quarter piece like the slice of a pie. (See Diagram Three, D, page 171.) Lap the cut sides of this three-quarter circle, and glue together to make a pointed roof like that of a circus tent. When the roof is dry, slip it upon the top of the hat-box, and your circus tent is done.

If you find some corrugated cardboard, it may be slightly curled and pressed so that it will stand on its rim, to make a board fence for the circus enclosure. Of course, you must have a fence! Of course!

Hardware boxes that come with covers double and close telescope fashion make very good circus cages. To make these cages, you will need to cut top and bottom from the boxes, leaving rims only. You may, if you wish, keep a very narrow margin of rim around the top and bottom cutting of your box. Paste strips of coarse netting, like cotton mosquito netting, over each opening of the box. It should be glued inside the box from side to side. This makes bars for the cages. (For cutting a box to make a cage, see Diagram Eight, page 182.)

Wheels may be added to the cages, so that the animals may go out on parade. The wheels are small circles cut from cardboard. There should be four for each cage, of course. When they are cut out from the cardboard, fasten each through its center to the base of a cage by a round-headed paper-fastener. The prongs of the paper-fastener should be bent to right and left inside the covers of the box. This holds wheels firm. If you have no paper-fasteners, sew the wheels to your box with raffia, or glue them to your box.

A booth for the circus grounds may be made from a box about three or four inches in size. Stand the box on its long side. Cut in its back an awning. The awning is made first by drawing an oblong space upon the back of the box, cutting this outline down at each side line and across its base. The cardboard is then pressed outward and upward to make the awning. (See Diagram One, C, page 166, for cutting awning.) Color the awning with red stripes.

Side-show tents for circus grounds are made like the tents of Camp Box. (See Diagram Three, E, page 171, for cutting the rim of a shallow box and bending it to make a tent.)

All toy figures that you can muster—tumble toys, wooden dolls, penny dolls, Noah’s Ark ladies, shepherds and shepherdesses, should go to Box Brothers’ Circus on the play-room floor. If you look among your toys, you will find animals for the circus, I know. They may even be animals cut from old magazine pictures.