Category Archives: Fun for the Kids

Cost of Monkey Bars in Australia

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We have almost finished the kid’s cubby house (photos and plans to come) and the next thing that we would like to do is a set of monkey bars and swing set. Our daughter has a “need” to go upside down and hang around a lot, so rather than have her do it on the couch against the wall, some monkey bars would be great.

Amazon sells a great kit of six monkey bars for about $22.00. This would be a great kit to use to build some monkey bars. Unfortunately I have yet to find a kit like that in Australia …

Monkey Bar Kit

The best I have been able to find in Australia so far is $14.00 each from Peppertown Playgrounds. A set of six from here would be $84.00, substantially more than the $22.00 it would cost from Amazon.

There are cheaper ways to make monkey bars using large diameter dowels (32mm+), or metal pipes. Neither of those options seem as easy as getting a proper set of monkey bars, but at least the dowel option might be possible. There are some interesting ideas on this site for how to do it …

Make A Cardboard Castle for the Kids

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Kids Cardboard Castle

Even though we have been in the house for six-months already we are still unpacking some of our belongings. We finally unpacked the last few boxes a few weeks ago and I was due to toss them in recycling bin, but then we had a better idea!

My daughter is learning about knights, castles, princes and princesses, and the Middle Ages. I figured that those boxes would make a great castle for my kids …

I took three different boxes and used them to make the above castle.

The corners were attached to each other using small zip ties and the outer two boxes were attached to the the centre box using both the zip ties and some No More Nails (same as Liquid Nails). The draw bridge was attached at the bottom using some zip ties so it could be raised up and lowered with some simple twine.

The kids have had a blast with it, and it was a good use of an hour or so of my time to cut out the cardboard and put it together.