What to do with all those cardboard boxes | Toddling Through the Silicon Valley | Cheryl Bac | Palo Alto Online |

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Toddling Through the Silicon Valley

By Cheryl Bac

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About this blog: I'm a wife, stay-at-home mom, home cook, marathon runner, and PhD. I recently moved to the Silicon Valley after completing my PhD in Social Psychology and becoming a mother one month apart. Before that, I ran seven marathons incl...  (More)

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What to do with all those cardboard boxes

Uploaded: Oct 9, 2019
I hate throwing away cardboard boxes before first turning them into something else.  With the right attitude, a cardboard box can become the perfect creative outlet for kids.

Our kids have made boats, airplanes, cars, houses, animals, etc out of cardboard boxes.  With the right scissors, tape and paint, the options really are limitless.

Our son spotted a book at our local bookstore called Out of the Box.  At first glance, it looked perfect for us.  We have lots of cardboard and I was excited to see what we could build.

Sadly I forgot about the book until after the school year had already started.  Wouldn’t this have been a great summer activity?  We recently borrowed the book from the library, and it did not disappoint.  I am hooked.  We made flowers, owls, a dragon puppet and a huge dome for the kids to play inside.

The hard thing about cardboard projects is that they just don’t last forever.  You play with them until they break and then move on to the next project.  And sometimes they break well before the kids wanted or expected them to.  That’s what happened with our dome.

I should have known that even with a roll of duct tape, our dome would not hold up.  After all, it is just made out of cardboard.  Making the dome was one project.  Keeping our dome standing up was another, more intense and more interesting project.

At first we only used duct tape and cardboard to create our dome.  After it collapsed, I realized that I could either add more duct tape, or try something else to give it extra support.  After lots of brainstorming, our dome was being held up with hula hoops, string and a pole...but, not surprisingly it still collapsed.

This afternoon we gave our dome one last chance.  We cut the cardboard and used a slightly different design. I am keeping my fingers crossed that this dome stays up for at least a week.

Even with the dome challenges, I can’t wait to do more cardboard box projects from this book.  It is a learning experience for all of us.  Who knows, one (or three) might even turn into Halloween costumes this year.

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Comments

Posted by Another parent, a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood,
on Oct 12, 2019 at 8:37 pm

Wow, very cool dome. Thanks for sharing!


Posted by Cheryl Bac, a Palo Alto Online blogger,
on Oct 13, 2019 at 8:59 am

Cheryl Bac is a registered user.

Another parent- Thanks! So far this design is holding up well.


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