Wednesday Love: We love cardboard boxes

My little bit of midweek happiness this week is all about cardboard boxes - We love cardboard boxes! A couple of weeks ago the Boy announced it was his favourite toy's birthday and that the toy needed a house to live in as well as birthday presents, cake, party etc etc. This is a picture of Doggie's house being decorated. Apparently Doggie likes things that are multicoloured!

We have 6 weeks of summer holiday approaching where I will have all 3 kids at home, all the time, for the first time (instead of having 1 or 2 in nursery). I am saving every cardboard box that comes into our house. The girls are already planning the houses they want to make for their toys. I think we could have a cardboard box metropolis taking over our house by the time we get to September.

I appears that we aren't the only people who love cardboard boxes though. My most popular post on here (by a huge margin) is "Cardboard Box Castles" - which has been viewed nearly 4000 times!

Cardboard box space rocket

When I look at which pages are looked at most on my blog, it's actually my cardboard box posts which are always top of the list. Everyone loves a cardboard box! I now have a new label of "cardboard box" to find more cardboard box posts. Over the summer friends have commented on our cardboard box castle, but it has now transformed into a space rocket.

This obsession with space started at the Science Museum in London where the kids were really excited to see actual rockets and a real piece of the moon. The Boy has decided he wants to go to the moon - NOW! (Add stamping feet to that statement).

Us at the Science Museum

We bought a 99p roll of value tin foil and set about changing our castle into a space rocket. The cone on top was made with some wrapping paper stuck onto lining paper to strengthen it.

Here's the inside of our rocket. We have bottle top buttons and a control panel made from the inside of a chocolate box. I even found an old piece of scrapbooking paper with planets on which we made into a navigation screen (by sticking it onto a cereal box).

A cardboard box theatre

Continuing the love for cardboard boxes in our house, I decided we needed a project for the Easter holidays. We made a cardboard box puppet theatre. We started out by cutting up a box so that it looked like this...

Then we papier-mached it with newspaper and diluted PVA glue. I don't think this was necessary, but it will make it last longer. However it has also warped the stage area, so you'll notice it looks a bit wobbly at the back now. 

We painted it next...

I sewed some curtains (I found a perfect piece of red shiny fabric in my fabric box) and we threaded them onto some dowel. The girls drew a woodland scene which we blu-tacked to the back wall for our scenery.

The Three Little Pigs is a favourite story in our house (the Boy is obsessed with the Big Bad Wolf), so that was our play of choice. I downloaded some images to make the puppets (from here) and the girls coloured them in and cut them out. We stuck them on long strips of cardboard.

We made some flat scenery too...

I added a cereal box onto the back to store all the puppets and scenery...

Then it was showtime! We put on a family show on Easter Sunday and the kids made tickets for everyone who was going to be watching. 

Cardboard box castles

We have been making castles in our house. The blonde one had to make a castle as a school project which was followed by a castle exhibition at school. The kids work was fantastic with a huge range of castles including cardboard ones, lego ones, ones from a kit and huge, pink, sparkly ones.

This was our castle. We included a portcullis made from cocktail sticks and I found some iridescent tissue paper which made water in the moat.

We made a door in the back of the castle so we could see into the Great Hall. We got a book on castles from the library to help know what to out into the castle. My daughter thought this was cheating! I think we need to work on learning research methods.

This was our Great Hall. The blonde one really enjoyed colouring in a peel-off sticker on acetate for a stained glass window. You can see her colouring in, which make the tapestries on the wall. We used Fimo to make a table, fire pit and candle stick.

A very large cardboard box arrived in our house recently and was too good to waste. The Boy and I had a fun morning painting and sponging...

All three kids like playing in it now!

Box puppets

The summer holidays are here and so I've pulled out my box of boxes, bottles, packaging etc to get making with the girls. We were inspired by an episode of Mister Maker on Cbeebies to make these puppets from two identical sized boxes that are sellotaped together at the open ends to make the puppet.

When I asked the girls what animal they wanted to make, it came as no surprise that they requested pink cats, particularly when they saw my shiny pink acrylic paint. These worked really well ( although I did use my glue gun instead of the glue stick they used on the programme so that they could be played with enthusiastically without everything falling off!).



I'm very happy at the moment as I won one of Shimelle's challenges at the weekend! My name was picked out for the "Up Above" photography challenge (my night sky photo) and I've won a pack of photo papers of my choice. Thanks Shimelle :)