DIY Toys - The Cardboard Box

When is a box not a box?  When it is in the hands of child.  Then it becomes a train, a racetrack, a sled, a car, a hideout, a dollhouse and anything else they can imagine.

When a big box comes into our lives, generally speaking I just leave it out, they play with it until it is dead, then I recycle it.   No extra instruction necessary, but sometimes it is fun to give their imaginations a boost.
Here are fifteen ways to use boxes (big and small) in play.

1. Put a steering wheel inside (paper plate) and it becomes a car
2. A sled.
3. Cut a hole in the side to make a beanbag toss.
4. Use a tissue box to make an Easter basket.
5. Make monster feet.
6. Use one big, or a whole bunch of small boxes to make a doll house.
7. Draw a road, houses, an airport. Play with toy cars, planes or trains
8. Make a robot
9. Use a whole bunch of boxes, fold out the front and back, connect, and make a human size maze.
10. Glue straws to make a tilty maze for a marble or bouncy ball. 
11. Use little boxes, taped closed, as big building blocks.
12. Make an art gallery.  Either fix the artwork to the box, or just get a bunch of markers a draw right on the box.
13. Make the box a shape sorter for the tots. 
14. Make a puppet theater.  Cut a window out of the side of a big box and fix a curtain of some sort to the inside.  Or build a wall with a bunch of little boxes to hide behind to give a fun puppet show.
15. Doll Bed, either big or small.

Here is an extra bonus.  After your box fun is done you can read Not a Box by Antoinette Portis

This post is a part of 5 Days of Teaching Creatively Blog Hop.  Check out other's posts on Toys, Games and Puzzles by clicking on Blog Hop Linky at the bottom of this post. You can click over to the TOS Review Crew Blog to find out more.  Don't forget to enter to win one of three great homeschool prize packages in the Teaching Creatively Giveaway