Imagine Boxes!

Many of us have excess boxes that we normally just recycle, but boxes can be some of the most creative material children can find. (If you are concerned about the safety of the cardboard that is delivered to your house, you can quarantine it before offering it to your children. Science Daily quotes a study reported in the New England Journal of Medicine which discovered the virus is detectable for up to 24 hours on cardboard.)

When supporting children's play with boxes or any other "found," and open-ended material, offer just enough help so children can create their own play. This will encourage children's own ideas, creativity, problem-solving and invention. Your role could be to lay out the materials and see what happens. If children come to you asking for help, ask for their ideas to solve the problem and if needed offer a limited amount of help that encourages them to explore their own solutions.

Boxes have long been fascinating to children. 

Children like to: 

• Climb into them
• Fill them with treasures and push them around like a moving van
• Put them over their heads
• Open and close them
• Draw on them
• Drum on them
• Stack them and push them over
• Put their stuffed animals in them and put their babies to sleep in them

Adults can support toddler and preschooler play with big boxes by

• Cutting doors (leave a hinged side) or windows
• Adding some pillows and blankets inside
• Providing markers, crayons, tape with pieces of ribbon, wrapping paper, leaves, etc to fasten on for children to decorate their boxes 
• Combine 2 or more boxes together to create bigger structures, apartment buildings, boats, rocket ships.
• With older children, they can do more and more of the design and building themselves. As the adult, do just enough to get children’s own creativity and ideas going

Adults can support play with medium sized boxes by

• Cutting a small and a larger hole in the top of the box and offering them various items from the recycle bin or the kitchen to fit into the holes. You can also cut a hole in the side so they can retrieve their things and do it again.
• Attach a string/small rope to the end of one
• Attaching a few together with string or twine or creating hooks that children can use to fasten them together like a train.

Boxes as Blocks

With medium or small boxes children may be interested in stacking or nesting them. Children really do enjoy knocking down a stack they have carefully built up (better if they initiate it, rather than you.). Since cardboard is light, this is usually a very safe activity. You can seal the boxes with tape to make them “block-like.”

Sculpture

Children can also use smaller boxes for creating sculpture. Adding other things from the recycle box can
offer an interesting dimension and texture for this building.

Cardboard as Building Material

Cardboard can be cut into different sized and shaped pieces and used with other building material--
blocks, cloth, bottles, tubes to make buildings, forts, ramps, wings, costumes. Provide the
pieces and children will let you know what they can do with them. You can also tie a rope to one end of the flat cardboard and make a sled for children to use with each other and their stuffed animals.

Mark Making

Cardboard is a wonderful surface for drawing, painting and collage. You can open up a big box so it is flat, and put it on the kitchen floor or outside with markers, paint, or tape and collage material. The younger the child is, the more likely they will get paint or marker on themselves. Don’t dress them in their best clothes for this adventure. And if it is their first experience with paint, just offer a little. Children can also paint with just water, if they are just beginning to “make a mark.”