Cardboard Castles

Did you know that the cardboard box was inducted into the national toy hall of fame in 2005?

Cardboard Box - The Strong National Museum of Play

Inducted Year: 2005 The Chinese invented cardboard in the 1600s. The English played off that invention and created the first commercial cardboard box in 1817. Pleated paper, an early form of corrugated board, initially served as lining for men’s hats. By the 1870s, corrugated cardboard cushioned delicate glassware during shipment. Stronger, lined corrugated cardboard soon followed. American Robert Gair produced the first really efficient cardboard box in 1879. His die-cut and scored box could be stored flat and then easily folded [...]

"With nothing more than a little imagination, those boxes can be transformed into forts or houses, spaceships or submarines, castles or caves. Inside a big cardboard box, a child is transported to a world of his or her own, one where anything is possible"
- The Museum of Play

I always think about the Spongebob episode where Spongebob and Patrick order a TV just for the box and annoy Squidward with their antics and impressively vivid imaginations. That's really what a big cardboard box feels like to a kid!

All of this to say, cardboard boxes are an incredible material for play. In 2016, I helped facilitate a big cardboard build in the Maker's studio at the Science Center of Iowa where I worked as a Maker-in-Residence. 10 years later, I still think about this experience often. It was magical to see the way visitors transformed our space into a cardboard city with tunnels, towers, walls, and secret passageways.

Recently, I finally got around to facilitating some larger scale cardboard building activities in a couple of different Makerspace settings.

I want to share some of my favorite moments, stories, and details from these experiences:

p.s.,

Sometimes it's the little teeny tiny details that delight me the most. I made a few copies of this tiny cardboard sculpture to place on the front desks of our main buildings at CSU Spur to get visitors' attention and encourage them to visit the Makerspace for a cardboard activity: