Take a look at Old Red in The English Family Anderson and have a go at making a model bus just like it 🙂

You’ll need:

some cardboard, a pencil, a rubber, a pen, some paint, some scissors, a ruler and some sticky tape.

First measure out the shape of the bus.  Using a cereal box made it easy because I could use the side as the roof (so it already had neat folds).  The front needs to be the same width as the roof; make the length at least twice the width of the bus.  Mine came out a bit short but you can make yours as long as you’ve got room for on your cardboard.

Once you’ve got the two sides, roof and front measured out you can draw in the details.  My bus is open at the back because I want to be able to furnish the inside later, but if you’ve got a long enough piece of card you can draw a back too (see the video at the bottom for how it should all be laid out).

When you’ve got it all mapped out, go over all the good lines in pen.

Then rub out all the untidy planning lines you don’t want anymore.

Then paint it 🙂

When it’s dry, cut it out:

Now you’ve just got to fold it and stick it.  If you’ve used a box like I have, you should already have good tidy creases between the sides and roof, but you’ll need to score a neat crease where the front folds to meet the other side.  Carefully place a ruler on the wrong side (inside) of the bus, along the line where you want to fold it, and score a line with your scissors.

NB: If you want to furnish the inside of the bus then take a look at this before you stick it together.  Then put a piece of tape on the top and side edge of the front of the bus (again on the wrong side)

Then you can fold it and stick it to the top and other side of the bus.

It’s a bit fiddly but you’ll get there 🙂

And there you have it!

I got this idea from Dylan Bryan.

Watch him do it (especially look out for his mum interrupting) I love this video* 🙂

* sadly, Dylan’s video is now deleted from youtube 😦

If you want to furnish your bus, go to Part 2 🙂