A football table will provide you and your children with many hours of entertainment, fun and lots of laughter. In order to make it yourself and with materials that are easy to find, all you have to do is follow this step-by-step tutorial on how to create your very own cardboard football table. If you need extra assistance, you can always ask the little ones to help you make it.

You can create plenty of children’s toys with just a cardboard box and a bit of creativity. This DIY cardboard football table will stimulate your child’s imagination, their manual dexterity and it will also teach them the importance of recycling and reusing materials which can be easily found in our homes.

Tools and materials

• Glue gun
• Scissors
• Cardboard box measuring 33 x 20 x 7 cm (similar to a shoe box)
• Green coloured card or paper
• 10 wooden clothes pegs measuring 7 cm long
• 15 wooden balls measuring 2 cm in diameter or buttons
• 4 wooden skewers
• Double sided tape
• Permanent marker
• White chalk
• Paint brush
• Acrylic paint
• Netting or mesh

Cost, time and difficulty

If you already have all the necessary tools, the cost of materials is about 10€, and it will be even less if you recycle materials that you have lying around the house!

In addition, you will be able to finish this DIY project in just a couple of hours and the level of difficulty is easy. It is an ideal project to do with your children. The’ll enjoy the process and will be able to let their imagination run wild when customising the football players. 🙂

How to make a cardboard football table step by step

Table football is a classic table game that both children and adults can enjoy and have lots of fun with. Luckily you can easily make one with the following step by step guide.

1. Make the players

In order to create the table football players we will use clothes pegs and wooden balls. You can also use buttons instead of the wooden balls.

First we fix a ball to the base of a clothes peg with the glue gun. We will repeat this step with 10 clothes pegs, in order to have 5 players per team.

Next we paint the top half of the clothes pegs with acrylic paint and a brush. We recommend that you use two contrasting colours in order to make both teams easy to tell apart.

Lastly, draw the eyes of the players with the permanent marker.

2. Build the field

In order to make the football field we have used a cardboard tray. You can use cardboard shoe boxes or even packing boxes, supermarket fruit boxes, etc. In order to customise it, follow these steps:

1. Cut the shorter sides of the box with the scissors, leaving a gap measuring 8 x 5 cm. This will be the goal posts.
2. Make 4 holes in each of the longer sides of the box. For this tutorial, we have made the holes at a height of 5.5 cm from the base and with a distance of 6.5 cm in-between.
3. Cut a green coloured card the size of the box base, which will represent your football field.
4. Draw the field lines on the green card using the white chalk, as per the images below.
5. Place the card on the bottom of the box. We recommend that you use double sided tape in order to fix it to the box.

3. Build the football table

The last step is to build your cardboard football table! First, insert the players into the wooden skewers and slide them into the holes on the side of the box.

Glue pierced wooden balls to the ends of the skewers to make sure they stay in place. You can also glue the players to the skewers to prevent them from moving.

Lastly, use double sided tape to fix netting or mesh around the goal post. For this tutorial we have used the mesh bag from garlic bought in the supermarket!

And last but not least, after following all the steps in this tutorial, all that is left for you to do is throw the wooden ball that we will use as the ball into the football table and start playing. Enjoy! 🙂

This is a table game for the whole family. Both kids and adults will love it. You can even set up your own league, and have hours and hours of fun!

Did you enjoy making this homemade cardboard football table? If you are looking for more toys that are easy to make with your children, don’t miss this post about Montessori toys that you can create in a few hours.

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