Build a Covered Wagon

While reading the Little House books, we read about how they travelled in a covered wagon. Though, when it was hot, Pa took the cover off and they drove without a ‘roof’. The wagon Pa had must have been big as he needed two horses to pull it. While talking about all of this, we decided to build a covered wagon for ourselves.

How to Build a Covered Wagon

While looking at designs for covered wagons, I came across this wagon from All Things Beautiful which is made from cardboard. But, then I found this wagon from The Crafty Classroom made from interlocking paddle pop sticks. As our boys are older, I decided this one was more challenging for them and would be more fun.

We followed these instructions until it came to the wagon cover.

We made the wagon cover a little differently as we didn’t have the supplies they suggested.

We cut a rectangle piece from a piece of calico and then folded over the two long sides, sewing it down leaving just enough room to fit a pipe cleaner in.  We folded the pipe cleaner to get the shape of the hood. We added some brown shredded paper for hay onto the bottom of the wagon.

We also made some blankets to add to our wagon. For these, we cut out some small rectangles of calico and drew patterns of them with permanent markers.

We also made some bags. To make these, we cut out small rectangle pieces of calico, turned them front side in and sewed all the sides up, leaving a little space at the top so that we could turn the bags inside out and fill them with rice. Then I sewed the top of the bag closed.

We all enjoyed making our covered wagon and would love to see yours if you have a go at making them too.