Five things to do with cardboard

Cardboard boxes - the only limit to the play ideas is your imagination!

Cardboard can form the basis of plenty of free play ideas for you baby and toddler. These five make especially good indoor activities for a rainy day!

Cardboard Puppet theatre

Take a cardboard box and cut out a rectangular ‘window’ in the upper half of  the front side. Hang a cord across the top of the window and drape two pieces of fabric over it for curtains. Help your little ones paint scenery backdrops and stick on the inside back of the ‘stage’. For characters, use finger puppets or painted fingers. Let imaginations run riot and create lots of stories.

Cardboard Robot

Take two cardboard boxes – one for your child’s body and a smaller one for his head. Cut a hole in the head box for your child to see through. Leave the bottom of the torso box open and cut holes in the top and sides for the head and arms. Attach the head box by glueing its flaps onto the torso box at the neck area and glue on old appliance knobs. Tell your child they’re a ‘service robot’, hand them a duster and steer them towards the bookshelves.

Cardboard Guitar

Take an empty shoe box and cut a circular hole in the lid or the bottom. Wrap elastic bands around the box lengthways, crossing the hole (the tighter and thinner the band, the higher pitched the resulting sound), then slip a pencil under the strings near the hole. Cut another hole at one end of the box and insert the end
of an empty kitchen roll tube. Decorate with stickers and your child is ready to rock.

Make a scene

Using the inside of a box, help your child come up with a setting. They could try glueing pictures from magazines on the box sides, and be creative in finding other objects to include. An old CD could be a pond, and twigs make great wintery trees, for example. Action figures can also be used. You may end up with a princess in the jungle or a fireman in a salon, but that’s half the fun.

Cardboard Castle

Give your child a proper place to wield his power! Cut off the top flaps of a large box and discard. Then cut out rectangles along the top edge so each corner becomes a ‘turret’. For a drawbridge, cut a door, leaving the bottom edge attached, and push it outwards. Use string for the drawbridge chains and punch holes to attach. Let your child try sponge painting to make the bricks of the castle.