Make a Table Football Game

You may need an adult to help you with some parts of this activity!

The first thing that we are going to do is make some marks where we want the rods for the players to go through the cardboard box. The model that we are going to make will have 2 rows of players for each team, so you will want to have 4 holes on each side evenly spaced along the side of the box. 

You are going to need to cut a hole in centre of each end of the box to be your goal. You may want to draw this first so that you know how big you want it to be. It needs to be big enough for your ball to fit through. If you want to add a net only cut the hole along 3 of the sides, leave it attached along the bottom edge.

You can now add your net by stretching and taping a piece of net over the three sides of the hole and onto the bottom of the cut out piece from the side of the box.

You are then going to want to push a wooden skewer through the holes along the sides of the box. The ends are sharp so you could use blue tack to cover the sharp end, and to give you a handle to hold or get an adult to trim them for you.

You can now use the lolly stick to become the players and attach them to the skewers. You will need to plan how you want to attach them as if they are too low they will not be able to swing as they will keep hitting the base, and if they are too high they will not be able to reach the ball. When you think you have them positioned at the correct height you can attach them to the skewer with tape 

If you find that you need to make some adjustments, you can always remove the tape and try again… 

You can decorate your football table and your players if you would like to

You can also experiment with different ball and see how this affects your game. You might like to try a marble, pom pom and ball of paper

If you can find a larger box than a shoe box you may like to experiment with adding more rods of players...

The video tutorial for this activity is available on the Surrey Libraries Facebook Page or YouTube Channel