Review: DIY Box Creations

I’ve always been the sort of person who wants to hang on to happy trash, shorthand for things that might otherwise be thrown out or recycled but that could also be used for creative projects.

Now I’m going to be hoarding empty boxes even more than usual in the hope that we can make some of the projects from DIY Box Creations: Fun and Creative Projects to Make out of Really Big Boxes.

Courtney Sanchez has gathered a dozen fun projects using large cardboard boxes in this book. The projects include:

airplane
rocket ship
boxcar
train table
hot air balloon costume
indoor doghouse
retro stove
dollhouse
puppet theater
fort
lemonade stand
sailboat

The book starts with general tips and a rundown of important supplies, and each project is shown in multiple steps so it’s easy to pull them together. The idea is that kids ages 8 to 12 can make these projects themselves with supervision, but grown ups could make them for younger kids as well.

These projects are cute, clever and a lot more detailed than the projects my daughter and I have made with big boxes in the past.

The train table, for instance, is stunning, with boxes mounted on plastic cups to give the table height and built-in storage for the tracks and trains. I also love the retro stove, which uses dowel rods and milk jug lids to make pulls and knobs. The puppet theater is great, too, and the fort has a Minecraft theme if you know any kids who are into that.

If kids help construct these creations, there’s a lot of learning to be done, including by following directions, engineering and constructing with their boxes, and the creative play that is sure to follow when the boxes have been transformed.

This book is a lot of fun and you might just find yourself buying moving boxes so you can make some of these projects.

Do you have a favorite thing to make out of cardboard boxes? I’d love to hear about it!

About the book: 80 pages, paperback, 12 projects. Published by Walter Foster Jr., September 2016. Retail price $9.99.

Did you know that October is Squirrel Awareness Month? I didn’t know we needed more awareness of these little creatures, but let’s take it as a sign to learn more about squirrels!

Let’s start with some fun facts via Kids Konnect: did you know there are five subfamilies and more that 280 species of squirrels? The smallest are pygmy squirrels and the largest, the Bhutan giant flying squirrel, can be longer that 4 feet (1.2 meters).

Tree squirrels can climb down trees so fast because their ankles can rotate 180 degrees, allowing them to grab the tree bark as they go down. While most squirrels don’t survive their first year of life, they can live five to 10 years in the wild and squirrels have been known to live up to 20 years in captivity!

Rhythms of Play has more fun facts and tips for observing squirrels if you want to add some real life nature to your nature study.

We always like to start these collections with life cycle and parts of the animal printables, so let’s grab the squirrel life cycle an parts of a squirrel worksheets from Montessori Nature. (It doesn’t look like these are free any more but they have a whole unit study on squirrels you can buy that includes life cycle and parts activities, characteristics of different kinds of squirrels, a printable poster, information about predators and more.)

Grab the squirrel lapbook printable (free with email address) from Homeschool Share to learn the parts of a squirrel, where they live, what they eat, whether they hibernate and more. There’s also a nut taste test printable, a place for making observations about squirrels, life cycle of an oak tree, games and more.

Simple Everyday Mom has some cute squirrel themed worksheets including tracing the letter s, labeling the parts of a squirrel and a letter s maze. She also has more activity pages with a squirrel theme, including matching, a more traditional maze and a counting and graphing activity.

Work on letter recognition with this squirrel and acorn game printable from Teaching Mama. I love the idea of hiding the letters in a fall themed sensory bin for kids to find, identify and match to the letter on the worksheet.

For older kids you can do this “if I were a squirrel” writing prompt from Lesson Planet.

And throw in a little counting with these squirrel and acorn tens frame printables from JDaniel4’s Mom, which you can use to count real acorns or any other little fall themed thing you have handy.

Have you read?

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