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They're happier with a cardboard box...
You can do so much with a cardboard box! With a pair of scissors and a bit of imagination, a large box can be a little house, a puppet theatre, a castle, a bus - anything you want, provided you remove anything sharp like staples. Or you can whip out the masking tape, paint & glue & turn it into a work of art...
Dolls House...
For a full-size dollshouse, use a large strong cardboard box for the main structure and build a removable roof out of the top flaps and triangular bits cut from other boxes. Stick together with masking tape. Cut out some doors & windows. You could add a layer of paper-mache if you can spare the room to make this last a few months. Add at least one internal divider, then get carried away decorating with fabric & wallpaper scraps. You can also decorate the outside with cut-outs from magazines and gardening catalogues. My girls, now 5 & 8, now build their own one-room houses and make little items of furniture out of small boxes and tubes.
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One-room house for Beanies made from a shoebox. |
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Cardboard Castle...
The older ones can help make this for the younger ones to play with - or even in, if you have big enough boxes! Assemble boxes, loo roll tubes & wrapping paper tubes on a base of sturdy cardboard until you have a design that pleases, then use masking tape to stick them all in place. Cut out arch-shaped doors & windows. Cover with a layer of paper-mache made with strips of old newspaper & watered-down PVA glue. Let this dry for a day or two, then paint in all the colours of the rainbow - you can add cut-outs from old wallpaper sample books or catalogues, stamp it with potato cuts - whatever. Ours lasted for almost a year, and was sized about right for Barbies.
Box Train...
Use 3 large old fruit trays from the supermarket. One, right way up, is the base, one is up-ended to form the cab and a third, placed upside down over the end of the base, is the driver & fireman's seat. Cut into it to make it slide right down over the end of the base. Use a bucket or one of those large plastic paint tubs on it's side to form the boiler, & a kitchen roll tube for a funnel. Stick it all together with masking tape and find a whistle or anything that'll blow to stick on the side of the cab. Almost anything long & straight can be made into a variety of levers, anything round, (like the lid of the plastic tub,) into a steering wheel, etc. etc.I never got as far as a layer of paper-mache, these always out-lasted the room available anyway! If you can get hold of more fruit trays, they can be a tender & carriages. The one pictured didn't have an overhang on the cab - most of them did - and did for some reason have a back rest. They all turned out differently!
You can even try to encourage your children to be orderly by decorating fruit trays with wallpaper or sticky-backed plastic (pure Blue Peter, c.1977!) to use as under-bed storage trays - we still have some in use that I made 13 years ago to go under the cot!
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