Newspaper Tower

Newspaper Spires

Have you ever dreamed about being a great engineer or architect, erecting buildings to stand the test of time? Well, everyone has to start somewhere and rock, bricks and stone are heavy and expensive. Building a newspaper tower is a quick and fun way to experiment with structure and form! You can test out your ideas for what will make the strongest structure.

The Challenges

Using tape (limited) and newspapers (unlimited), have a go at one or more of our Newspaper Challenges:

1. Build a free standing newspaper tower the reaches the ceiling.
2. Make a bridge that spans from one side of your room to the other.
3. Build a structure that can take the weight of one of your teddies.
4. Choose a famous building from around the world and recreate it in newspaper.
5. Build your ideal world with newspaper – could you make one or more of the following: a school, a library, a hospital, a playground or somewhere else.

What are your best ideas on a final construction? What is going to make it strong? Are there other materials that you would like to include to make a better tower?

TIP — Try to use biodegradable masking tape if you can. Because then when you are done the whole thing can be recycled or composted.

Take it Further

Take your newspaper structures further – and understand the science behind the fun, with these STEM activities to try.

Or try building structures with different materials — a fun one to try is dried spaghetti and marshmallows – you may need to pull the marshmallows apart so they aren’t too heavy for the spaghetti, but they make an excellent cement for sticking your structure together (and a delicious one to snack on after you are finished!).