build-a-box

Cardboard Cubed

Why Play This Way?

These play opportunities offer holistic, child-driven development, engaging large motor skills and fostering cross-hemisphere brain processing. Stacking and knocking down boxes brings joy, and also encourages resilience by building frustration tolerance. Finally, when children use their imaginations and their little hands to transform boxes into new play materials, they exercise agency, creativity, flexible thinking, and fine motor skills! Let your little ones be the architects of their play—where anything can be anything, especially with a simple cardboard box.

Math

construction

music

Recycled

Large Motor

household

SET THE STAGE FOR PLAY: 2 minutes

Adult Participation: Optional 

Knock Your Box Off

“Get Up, Stack Up”

→ Save and gather your old shoe boxes. Or, visit a local shoe store and ask for their extras!

→ Stack your boxes up like blocks. 
→ Knock them down, and then build them back up again. 

The repetition of this playful activity builds resilience and increases attention span.

“It’s a Hard Boxed Life”

→ Place a heavy object inside one box, and seal it shut.

→ Add your new heavy box to your play and see how different it feels.
→ Try stacking your heavy box atop & below your other boxes.

The need to compensate for a box’s changing heft will not only strengthen muscles but also cross-hemisphere processing.

“Build Me Up”

→ Hit the recycling bin and gather boxes of various sizes.
→ Sort your boxes into piles by size. 
→ Construct a tower with each of your organized piles. 
→ Spend some time comparing your various towers.

○ How high can you stack your boxes? 
○ How many towers can you make?
○ Can you change the height of your tower by stacking your boxes differently?
○ Can two towers with the same number of boxes be different heights? Why?
○ Is the tallest tower always the one with the most boxes?

SET THE STAGE FOR PLAY: 5 minutes

Adult Participation: Optional 

Beat Boxing

  1. Make a Drum

    ○ Take a box, sealed side up, and bang it on it like a drum. 
    ○ Create more drums with different sizes and shapes of boxes.
    ○ Use wooden utensils from the kitchen as your drumsticks.
    ○ Cover one of your boxes with tin foil and see if it makes a different sound than your first drum.
    ○ Put a pillow inside your box and see if that changes the sound.

  2. Make a String Instrument

    ○ Turn a rectangular box on its side and strum it like a guitar.
    ○ Or, cut a hole in your box and stretch rubber bands across the hole (and around the box) so that as you pluck the rubber bands, the sound will resonate through the hole.

  3. Make a Maraca

    ○ Find a sealed box of cereal, corn, or pasta to experience different sounds as you shake.
    ○ Grab a metal Band-Aid box, add in a single hard object (like a golf ball), and listen to the sound of your new shaker.
    ○ Now, add cotton balls to your box. What kind of shaker do you have now?

Now, gather your instruments, grab some friends, and create your own Cardboard Band!

SET THE STAGE FOR PLAY: 5 minutes

Adult Participation: Optional

"ALL A-BOX!"

BOXED IN

  • Place a few boxes end to end. 
  • Grab a few friends or stuffies and hop in!
  • Embark on the transportation adventure of your dreams! 
    • What vehicle did you create and where are you going?




TUNNELED OUT

  • Cut the bottoms and tops off of several large boxes.
  • Tape the open ends of the boxes to one another until you have a long tunnel you can crawl through.
    • Optional: cut little windows along your tunnel so that as you crawl through, you can also peek outside.

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