Yellow Submarine Pinewood Derby Car

I love making Pinewood Derby cars with my kids and especially had fun with this Yellow Submarine Pinewood Derby car.

We heard that having the weight up high and towards the back helps, so we added an Allen wrench as a periscope. The stack on top is also made of MDF and we hollowed out the inside of the car to keep the car under 5 ounces.

My boy got to use spray paint for the first time ever and did a really great job. My husband made the mistake of handing it to him while we were still inside the house, and my boy almost sprayed it in the air just to experiment. Yikes! It could be worse, my friend’s preschooler tagged her brand new car with spray paint after sneaking into the garage. Worst nightmare ever.

I knew hand painting on the details would be tricky, so I made the decals on my Silhouette and printed off photos of the Beatles so that they could be looking out the window. Using vinyl decals made it easy for my boy to stick them on. We just glued on the heads of the Beatles and stuck the decals on over it.

You can download the Silhouette file here or if you don’t have a Silhouette, Alicia over at Zoley Creations does a great job with vinyl!

Download Yellow Submarine Free Silhouette File

Last year, my boy’s car was super slow. So this year we watched all the videos and followed all the tips to make it faster. But no luck. It did better than last year, but he didn’t win a single race. We are clearly missing something. His poor heart was broken, and seeing him broke my heart. That night, before the race, he even prayed, “I am not asking to win, I am just asking to be strong enough to handle it if I don’t win. And just bless me not to be last.”

We talked a lot about how winning isn’t everything and what is important are the memories we made together. Plus, his car was totally original and looked really cool. His grandma loves to sing “Yellow Submarine” with the kids and so the Yellow Submarine Pinewood Derby Car is kind of a tribute to the fun they have together. I hope that even with losing, he will have fond memories of the Pinewood Derby like I did. I don’t think I ever won either 🙂