Make Your Own Covered Wagon with a Milk-Carton Craft

Each summer, my kids and I celebrate our pioneer heritage, especially those who traveled across the infant American continent in covered wagons and by foot. To make the concept more hands on for my kids, we decided to make a covered wagon! This covered wagon craft is pretty simple to decorate and assemble. Making the milk-carton covered wagon gave us a fun base for learning about how travel in a covered wagon would have been.

The supplies for the covered wagon craft are somewhat common. You probably need to plan ahead so you can gather what you need for the future project! Here's the list.

The project to put together the covered wagon doesn't take too long, except for the paint drying time! 

First we cleaned the milk carton. Then we cut it in half. This will be the wagon bed for our wagon! We left around an inch to be the edge of the wagon.

Then we decided to paint the wagon brown. We ran into a snag when we realized that the cream carton had a wax coating on it. The paint did not want to stick. We decided to cover it in a brown paper bag so it would be easier to paint. My son thought it looked more like wood when it was all brown.

After that, we attached the wheels and axle. The axel will be the wooden dowels. We cut them down to be the right length, long enough to go through and under the wagon bed. I used a pin to make a hole in the wagon and we put the dowels through. I glued the wheels to the dowels. (I was very determined to make wheels that rolled so I used Super Glue and made sure to keep turning the dowel until the glue on the wheels dried.) It's so much more fun when the wheels move!

Next we made the wagon cover. I cut a small piece of fabric and wrapped it around pipe cleaners, stapling the pipe cleaners in place. We then bent the cloth-covered pipe cleaners, trimmed them to be the right size, and stapled those in place onto the sides of the wagon. In the picture you'll notice lots of staples on our wagon, because my son was eager to help with the stapling part!

Finally, we attached the harness.This optional string allows us to be able to pull the covered wagon. My son wanted to be able to "harness" a "horse" too. To do this, we tied a string to the front axle.

Now that our wagon is ready to go, we're read to stock the covered wagon and travel across the "continent."

My son and I stocked the wagon full of things to represent what the pioneers would have packed in their covered wagons. Here's what is in our wagon.

For our fun, we found some little people after we filled the wagon. The pirates don't really look like pioneers, but hey, it's what we had!

We have driven across the American continent, and it takes a long time! For young kids, though, it takes a little bit more hands-on understanding to recognize what traveling by foot and in a covered wagon would entail. Especially from Iowa to Oregon or Utah. My son was surprised to learn that most kids did not get to ride in the wagon!

Watch the following video to see what else my then-six-year-old learned as we stocked our wagon and "crossed the plains."

Making our own "little people" sized wagon was a lot of fun for us. While my older son extended the learning and practiced stocking the wagon with "food" and other necessities, my toddler daughter could simply play with it. It helped her recognize a covered wagon!