Moving Entertainment

When we moved recently, my son had to fend for himself far more than I'd typically like.  He's a pretty stoic soul, so coped admirably.  We did get some major clinginess later on, which I suspect was a flow on effect of both parents filling box after box after box, then Mummy going on teaching placement almost immediately after.  But during the move, we did manage to find him some novel entertainment.

Boxes are really quite amazing playthings, you know!

Some lines drawn on with a vivid, and wa-lah, a custom-made road for toy cars.

I must admit that I can really struggle to spend quality time playing with my boy.  This little project was ideal. Mummy got to use cellotape and scissors, Munchkin operated the cars.

As we were moving house, I figured we may as well bring out the stash of little boxes I'd been saving up for cardboard creations.

There were a few shops.  These promptly became garages.

A post box.  With letters for posting.

And, of course, the fire station in fire-station red!

When that all started to get a bit old, some rocks appeared for digging work to commence.

We had so much fun!  We spent the better part of a morning creating, brumming, and playing together.  And once it was no longer as interesting a week later, it simply did a quiet disappearing act into the recycling bin.  I think this is such a fabulous idea because it combines motor skills (posting letters into letter box and fishing them out too quite a lot of concentration for my three year old - it wasn't a very big letterbox!), creativity (we made some trees out of cardboard and drew a pond for our plastic frogs to sit in), literacy (we wrote Fire Station on the red box), imagination (Munchkin quickly created scenarios and imaginary play with the stores/garages), and hours of free entertainment, some in relationship with me or his Dad, some by himself while we madly packed!

We made another road last week.  This time I remembered to turn the box over so it didn't have any words on it before I drew the roads!  Our latest road had a cardboard tunnel.  Munchkin thought that was pretty cool too.

Amy