Move/Make: Cardboard Box Creations

Submitted by my sweet mom: Bev (possibly the world's best Grammy)

When I was growing up my family had a set of Childcraft books, the kid addition to World Book Encyclopedias. I spent hours and hours pouring over them, but my very favorite was the ‘Make and Do’ book.

Recently I spent some time with two of our grandsons, and we pulled out the book for inspiration. I showed them the pages of projects I’d done – the soap carving, the doll furniture, costumes, but when they saw the cardboard castle and submarine their faces lit up!

So we piled in the car, started driving in alleys, and hit pay dirt when we found a company having hardwood floors installed. They gave us a pile of clean cardboard to haul home.

We purchased a roll of duct tape, borrowed their mom’s package tape, pulled out markers, a knife I purchased at the dollar store just for cutting boxes, and I found some pieces of string to use for the door pulls.

We had such fun looking at the photo of the submarine, and making adjustments to our design. The boys really wanted to be able to be inside the submarine, together, and have a door that would close behind them. An almost-empty plastic wrap box was drafted to make a periscope, which delighted them.

So next rainy day, or bored day, or everyone’s grumpy day, you might find a big working space in your house (or garage) and let everyone’s imagination run wild. If you’re lucky enough to run across a set of these books, grab them, especially the ‘Make and Do’ volume. It has wonderful instructions for making modeling clay, foam pictures, puppets, marionettes, etc. etc. etc. I had as much fun as they did, and when we had finished the boys didn’t care at all about painting the submarine gray, like the one in the book; they just wanted to climb inside and start imagining what the bottom of the ocean might be like.

I’ve already promised them, next visit we’ll tackle the castle, complete with moat.