These beautiful paper triangles take a bit of time to make, but lend themselves to such wonderful play that it’s worth the effort!

To make the triangles, you’ll want to use thick cardstock, not construction paper or craft paper. I had a sheet of cardstock for each color of the rainbow, although that’s by no means necessary. Feel free to stick to all one color, or just a few. Veronika immediately wanted to “help” as I pulled out a ruler and tape.

Cut strips of the cardstock that are 1 inch high x 4 inches wide. Use a ruler to make a mark at 1 inch intervals, width-wise.

Fold up along these marks to form a triangle, and tape closed. Repeat until you have the desired amount of triangles. We made 12 of each color!

First, I just wanted Veronika to explore them. She loved scattering them in and out of a bucket, or burying tiny toys in a pile of them. We also color-sorted them into piles.

But the real fun comes when you try to stack them into towers. For this we enlisted the aid of big brother Travis.

The challenge was to make a tower sturdy enough that it could hold a sweet treat (hint: a cookie) on top. I promised him the cookie to eat if he could make it work! He puzzled out how to build sturdy layers arranging three triangles in a sort of pyramid, with a flat surface for the cookie on top. We built up a structure that was several layers deep and tall like this.

The cookie stands! We tried our luck to see if it could hold two cookies, but alas the tower crumbled.

What will you build balance atop your paper towers? Please share in the comments!