Easy Indoor Activities: Fun with Boxes

With Christmas not too far back in the rear-view mirror, we still have a lot of boxes that we haven't gotten around to letting go of yet. With that in mind, I decided to pull out some of those boxes to figure out what kind of fun things we could do with them.

"But Dad, playing with boxes is totally square"

after the jump: what we did with them

First up, one of the boxes I grabbed had a sheet of bubble plastic in it, so we had a few minutes of bonus fun with that before even getting started with the boxes. Unfortunately, this wasn't your traditional bubble wrap, so there were only a few large bubbles (more like chambers) to pop, rather than a whole bunch of smaller bubbles. It also didn't make the same popping sound, and gave off more of whoosh sound when popped. I just thought that I should take this opportunity to let the manufacturers of the world know that when they skimp on the packaging, they are also skimping on the fun. No matter, the kids still loved stomping and jumping around on it, trying to flatten the large bubbles.

Just like real bubble wrap, but half the fun!

After there was no more fun to be had with the plastic sheet, I pulled out the boxes. Then I pulled out the crayons. I told the kids to go wild. I thought we might make some ramps or an airplane or something, but they wanted to make... a bed. Yup.

That's cool, I guess. I mean, they aren't really crazy about real bedtime, but I guess that it's fun if it's make believe. I suppose that's why they like pretend dinner as well. You know, just as long as it's not the real thing...

Crayons + pretty much anything = fun. That can be both a blessing and a curse.

It's a hide-a-bed

After playing that for a while, I had a fun idea; we could build a robot! The kids were really excited when it snowed one day earlier this month, but despite their high hopes, there wasn't enough snow to build a snowman. I fully realize that snowmen and robots are not the same thing, but the robot was essentially a snowman made with boxes and such instead of snow. With this in mind, I decided to call him the Snowbot.

Okay, so I was totally stoked about the robot hand, but I think he
still needs a fedora or something.
Don't worry, we disassembled him before he became self aware.

Building the Snowbot was a blast, although it wasn't as sturdy as one would hope. I guess some tape could have fixed that, but I wasn't sure where any was (also, less mess is a good thing). So yeah, long story short; boxes = fun.