10 Tips for Cardboard Play Day

The Global Cardboard Challenge is here again! Will you be joining THE WORLD on October 5th, 2014 to either play or host an event?

For everything Caine's Arcade and The Global Day of Play, please be sure to check out The Imagination Foundation's excellent website and resources. 

I'm also excited to be planning my own event in collaboration with a local adventure playground here in Tokyo! More information to come, but until then I want to share some of my insights from hosting 5+ events last year.......

 *10 Tips for Cardboard Play Day*

1. It's all about the cardboard!

• Provide a wide variety of cardboard! Shoe boxes, small boxes, over-sized boxes, cardboard tubes, and whatever other reclaimed materials you've collected all add to the diversity and creativity of what kids create.

• A rule of thumb that I follow is 1 square meter of cardboard for every 20-30 kids

2.Don't let cardboard get unruly.

• Cardboard + kids can = chaos!

• Keep the cardboard upright if you can (as if each piece were a book on a book shelf.) That way there is thought in selecting the cardboard and it doesn't get kicked around and stepped on.

• It's even more helpful to organize your cardboard by size. (Think of a lumber yard.) Kids often know what size materials they need and if the cardboard is organized then kids won't have to spend time rooting around through big piles to get what they want.

3. Give them tool boxes.

• Tool boxes allow kids to be mobile and have everything they need to build whatever, wherever, with whoever.

• A tool box can be as simple as a shoe box, or a cardboard six pack.

• Provide a place that is clearly marked for kids to return tool boxes when they're finished working or ready to leave the play day.

4. Provide a secure area for kids to keep their stuff (i.e. coat check).

• Kids easily loose track of their new friendship bracelet, cell phone, hooded sweatshirt, etc.

• Create a place (as simple as a "drop" pile), or even better an informal system like a coat check, for keeping track of kids' things so they can focus on building and collaborating with their friends, and you can alleviate the hassle of having to help them search for their lost items.

5. Keep the organizer free.

• If you are organizing a cardboard play day, recruit enough parent volunteers to assist kids so you're free to trouble shoot any problems that might pop up.

• Parents get excited and often want to share or ask questions. If you're responsibility is to supervise kids, you may be torn between providing adequate supervision and having a great conversation with a future cardboard enthusiast.

• It's also helpful to have a volunteer that is solely devoted to taking photos so you have some great shots for promoting your event next year.

6. Provide a theme/give permission

• Telling kids that they can build whatever they want is exhilarating for some and overwhelming for others.

• Providing a theme a invites collaboration and helps kids narrow their focus....

• We're building a village....

• We're building igloos....

• We're building a cardboard maze....

• We're making cardboard costumes....

• We're making an arcade....

• It's a cardboard ocean!

• Some kids need permission to create and many just want to be told it's OK to be creative and let loose. Indulge them! This is their time to think big and we want to encourage them in any way we can.

7. Give kids real tools.

• It's important to gauge your audience, (parents kids and the host institution) when deciding what kind of tools you're going to make available to participants. I prefer to always give kids "real tools" as opposed to dumbed down versions that can cause frustration. In the real world, however that's not always possible.

• If kids are only allowed to use safety scissors and plastic saws, try arming your adult volunteers with more professional tools that can help finish the job. These are the tools I've found to be most effective and in my opinion entirely kid-friendly, but they require instruction and adult supervision:

• round tipped serrated cutting tool

• Phillips head screw driver

• scissors

• cordless drill

8. Use reusable fasteners.

• To build really cool, big stuff out of cardboard you need some kind of fastener to hold everything together. (tape and hot glue just don't cut it!) There are 3 that stand out in my opinion, based on their re-usability AND functionality.

• MakeDo

• re-usable zip ties

• nuts and bolts

• All of these fasteners have different price points and advantages and disadvantages, so I really recommend getting a few of each and test driving them at home before your event.

• It's really helpful to show participants how the fastener you're using works when kids arrive, so keep some supplies in your pocket to quickly demonstrate as you greet new arrivals.

9. Have an exit strategy.

• Sometimes kids are so excited at cardboard play day, they can't stop building! Givie kids a heads-up starting 30 minutes before cleanup, so they can get focused on completion and get ready to say goodbye to their creations.

• Make sure you have a plan for recycling your cardboard. I was once left in a terrible position at a play day, when the organization that donated the cardboard said they could no longer take it back! I had to haul it all back to my home by bike and then put it out for recycling over a course of several weeks!

• If you haven't prearranged volunteers for cleaning up and bundling cardboard at the end of your event, a clipboard signup is handy when participants arrive and usually provides you with enough hands to finish the job.

10. Get feedback.

• This is something new I'm hoping to try this year; a one sentence question for kids as they're cleaning up or heading out.... you could also try a paper-pencil survey or even a simple high five?

• What would you build next time?

• Is it more fun to work by yourself, with your mom and dad, or with a friend?

• What was the best part about today?

• Have you ever made/built something like this? Why/Why not?

• See you next year?

DIY cardboard fasteners

The girls have been building a fishing shanty, so we implemented this method for joining cardboard. I demo-ed it at a cardboard play day last fall. Here's the lowdown:

PROS: rEAlly cute, fairly strong, reusable, made from reclaimed materials, virtually free

CONS: takes a fair amount of dexterity to thread buttons and twist, and sometimes hard to thread through the cardboard without a helper. Only suitable for non weight-bearing construction.

What you need: twist ties (the longer and thinner the better) buttons, a screw driver

What your kids will call you: AWESOME.

Cardboard for Stools & Tabletops

It was a pleasant discovery to find out that old album covers can be opened up to create a large, 4 paneled piece of cardboard for the Totem Box table and stool tops.

You may or may not have noticed from my previous pictures that Stevie Wonder is gracing the surface of our Totem Box table. If my daughter does in deed learn to read from constant exposure to "Master Blaster" lyrics, I'll be the first to let you know.

The album cover cardboard is pretty durable. It can recover from a spill as long as it isn't left standing too long, but if you're after something that you can truly pass a rag over, I suggest re-purposing shiny, plasticized paper shopping bags.

The plastic is not recyclable, but I'm pretty sure that these bags are processed without a problem at most paper recyclers. We are able to put them out here in Japan, and I pick them up from other people's recycling piles for the odd project here and there.

While cardboard still rules, it's nice to have options...

DIY Cardboard Camera

There are so many adorable ideas for cardboard cameras on the internet, but this one comes from the first post I ever published on The Cardboard Collective about cardboard beads. When I got my new camera, I had the paper camera brochure left over, and glued it to some cardboard. We strung it with some cardboard beads on paper twine to make one of the more popular items in the girl's jewelery box.

Recently I joined up with about 15 other mothers from my daughter's yochien (Japanese preschool) and we made cardboard camera necklaces for all the kids at her school. The cameras were a prize from our fishing booth at the summer festival.

It was SO fun to see the kids snapping photos of each other. Since most of the parents were also walking around with their cameras slung around their necks, there was the slight excited air of a press conference announcing the magic of summer; more kiddie pools and popsicles to come....

Some of the kids know I helped make the cardboard cameras, so it was cute when they pretended to take my picture. A sweet way of trying to communicate and be playful with me. Of course I love kids AND cardboard, so I was pretty smitten the entire day.

Say "チーズ!"

Starry Cardboard Birthday Crown

An easy beautiful birthday crown that my daughter put together on her big day. She wants to wear it again next year, and I agree it turned out beautifully. There is definitely a Glinda, Good Witch of the North quality there.

If you can't find gold cardboard, try jarred gold paint and pizza box lids........

Paper Bag Hat

I'm literally AND figuratively wearing a new hat these days.

Two actually. The first one is a partnership with the Japanese company eco+waza, which puts out a magazine and sells eco-friendly products from Japan. I'm designing cardboard projects for their packaging, (a cardboard box) and I'll be posting a few of the projects here on The Cardboard Collective in the coming months.

The second is a project working as the Japan correspondent for Playscapes, a blog about the world's best playgrounds. As you know I'm raising two eager young playground testers, and love play and design, so what better job is there? Find the most beautiful, inspiring and creative playgrounds near you HERE.

As for the paper bag hat that I'm wearing, I created it from a brown Kraft paper bag with this pattern by Angellea Designs. As a fledgling pattern designer myself, I have to say this pattern is just excellent. I made paper hats for the girls too, and they are going to provide perfect full sun coverage when we're out foraging for summer berries this year. Although this hat isn't water resistant, a sun hat is meant to be worn in the sun, and what hat could be lighter and easier to fold up?

I didn't do anything special to sew the paper hat other than use the longest stitch length on my machine and add a bias paper trim to the edge. They sew up really fast, since there's no lining, and hey they're just fun.

How to Pin an Insect

At the risk of loosing part of my readership, I have a few confessions to make.....the first is that this is not my first blog.

My first blog, swallowed somewhere in the darkness of internet cloud storage, was a digital archive called, "Tiny Architects." I didn't work on it for very long. I'm sure you're envisioning a sweet little blog about kids building and playing, making their own stuff, designing.......actually "Tiny Architects," was a reference to another breed of little builders.....insects. Which is where my second confession comes in: I love, and am deeply fascinated by insects.......

Ichneumon Wasps on the Appalachain Trail by Amber

As a kid, I was an avid collector. I reared monster silk worm caterpillars, and staged sleep overs in our camper trailer with a white sheet and black light to attract night flyers at the back of our family's sheep farm.

A good portion of every summer was spent in pursuit of the elusive and luminescent Green Tiger beetle; not to mention the lightening fast, Green Darner dragonfly. Once I was thrown into a tree (butterfly net in hand) by our ill-tempered pony during an attempt to ride him bare-back to one of my favorite collecting spots.

In the back of my mind, I always thought that I would someday become an entomologist, and truth be told, maybe someday I still will. Until then, I feel it's time to begin to share my bug collecting passion with my young daughters, and hopefully you too, as insect collecting relates to cardboard... and hey! you will be surprised.....

First of all a few notes on the evolution of entomology. While insects are some of the most populous creatures on earth, I no longer believe that it's a good idea to continue the old catch and kill practices that I learned as a kid. Save that job for real entomologists.

For one, we now have the ability to capture beautiful images of insects with smart phones and digital cameras. Photos last longer and I would argue are even more informative because they can capture the insect in it's natural habitat, practicing it's natural behavior.

If your child is an insect lover, I highly recommend the gift of a child-friendly digital camera with a good macro feature. It could also become a springboard for them to document their collection online in a blog, or through some other kind of digital format.

That being said, I do think it's still valuable for children to handle and examine both living and deceased insects and I think it's still entirely possible to do both of those things with a conservationist mindset. When it comes to live insects, we practice catch and release, and the girls use small nets I made them from re-purposed Badminton rackets. If we find something really interesting we observe it for no more than a day, and then release it again.

In terms of collecting, we have amassed a great little collection of insects that were found dead during various walks and bike rides. Those finds have been more than adequate for building a specimen collection.

Our prized creatures have been sitting in a small jar at the back of our freezer for quite a while now though, so if you're ready to learn how to pin an insect, right here, right now, we're primed to get started........of course, we'll need to build a little something out of cardboard first.

A spreading board is used to get the body of the insect into the correct position. The wings should rest at their natural level so that they can be arranged and left to harden. First put a pin through the body of the insect. (Pinning position diagrams here) Next, use insect pins and strips of paper to gently leverage the wings into the desired arrangement. Never puncture a wing with a needle as it will damage your specimen. Extra information about pinning different types of insects HERE

To make the spreading board:

• Cut a base piece 14cm x 20cm.

• Glue 2 more piece of cardboard (6.5 cm x 20 cm) on top so that you create a gap that is 1-1.5 cm wide and about 1 cm deep.

If your insect's body has hardened, it's a good idea to sandwich it between 2 pieces of a dampened cloth and wait (usually overnight) for the body to soften and become easier to work with.

This is a collection for my daughters who are 2 and 4, so we've tried to keep it simple. I haven't added labels, (but you can) And we did not arrange our insects by scientific order. The girls chose the groupings of "Black Beetles,"  "Shiny Green Beetles," and " Bees."

To mount the collection, we found an old container that held craft supplies, and glued cardboard to the base so we could stick our pins in it. To preserve the insects and protect them from an infestation, make sure you have a tight fitting lid for your case. Add cedar oil either on a cotton ball nestled in a plastic cap or by wiping the insides of your wooden display case with it.

This is just our little starter collection, but it's fun to remember when we found these  insects and have funny conversations about what ants eat, and where caterpillars sleep at night.

I hope I can nurture in the girls the same love for nature that my parents gave me, even if they don't go as far as someday staging a bug collecting sleep-over. I've already got the perfect one planned.

Cardboard Playground circa 1967

Big Play back top Rescan

LIFE Magazine - November 3, 1967 (Volume 63, Number 18) Page 3

LIFE Magazine - November 3, 1967 (Volume 63, Number 18) Page 2

LIFE Magazine - November 3, 1967 (Volume 63, Number 18) Page 1

LIFE Magazine - November 3, 1967 (Volume 63, Number 18) Modern Living -- The Big Play in Paper, from Giraffes to Gazebos

Wow, check out this 1967 LIFE magazine article entitled, "The Big Play in Paper", that was lovingly rescued and scanned by my friend Miss Meryl Ann Butler during a recent Spring cleaning.

Meryl Ann and I met while taking online classes from Diane Gilleland at Crafty Pod, (I learned almost everything I know about blogging from those classes) and I got to know Meryl Ann by her spit-your-tea-out-hilarious sense of humor and from the really helpful stuff she posted in the forums (she has a long and distinguished career in the craft industry.) She is the author of the book 90 Minute Quilts among, many others and she has an intensely joyful, vibrant style with a personality to match.

Meryl Ann recently sent me an email message explaining that:

"This clipping was in my "morgue file" which was a file we had in the olden days before electronic files… with clippings of images that might inspire future artwork. My file had thousands of clippings, and I just threw most of it away a couple of days ago - a hard thing to do, since I had collected images for a long time - well, at least from 1967, lol!  I only saved a couple of them, and of course the second I saw this I thought of you, Amber!"

How very thoughtful, and how entirely awesome. Enjoy a trip back to the glory days of cardboard......................we'll relive them again soon?

Loose Parts Play & Cardboard Totem Boxes

When I released the Totem Box pattern a few weeks ago,  I alluded to the fact that this was a design that I used to manage the "little" toys in our house, but the thought behind the design goes a little deeper.

Quite a few months ago, I made an online friend named Allie who writes the blog, Bakers and Astronauts (as well as Play Lab). Allie's blog is hands down my favorite website about early childhood and inspired play, and it was Allie who first introduced me to the Theory of Loose Parts, which got me exploring with my own children.

"The Theory of Loose Parts Play" was proposed by Simon Nicholson back in the 1970's. His theory is this: "In any environment, both the degree of inventiveness and creativity, and the possibility of discovery, are directly proportional to the number and kind of variables in it."

When I started thinking about adapting Loose Parts Play inside my home, there were  a few things to rethink. First of all when Nicholson speaks about number and kind of variables, I think he ultimately takes his inspiration from one place, and one place only; the truly wild outdoors. Outside loose parts can fall from the sky, be dug from the ground, plucked from a branch, or drop from a bird's wing. The sounds, textures, and  smells are all ever-changing and we could never, ever recreate such an amazing sensory experience  inside a house, even with dump trucks of glitter.

I had to watch my daughters play a lot to better understand how I could compete with mother nature and increase the number of "variables" (not necessarily the amount of stuff) within our home play environment. Over time, I noticed three categories of objects emerge that they "needed" to make their play more cohesive:

Loose Parts: hand-held objects that assume imagined identities through play.

Containers: objects used by my daughters for collecting, sorting and transporting loose parts as well as defining small spaces.

Expandable Parts: objects used by my daughters to construct and define large spaces

Now, whenever my daughters engage in loose-parts-style play, I try to make sure that all of these elements are available to them. When they are absent, tragic things have happened. Entire shelves of puzzles have been mined for loose parts, fabric and sewing notions have gone missing and Loose Parts Play has ravaged my home like a wildfire, consuming hours of my time in little loose parts cleanup. Although these ideas are only my own expansion on someone else's theory, so far they have proven true for our sample size of two. I'm curious to hear about your observations. What drives the loose parts engine in your home or classroom?

Enjoy our family recipe for Loose Parts Play (indoors):

(Substitute as necessary)

Loose Parts wooden blocks, plastic construction blocks, plastic bottle caps, acorns, shells, stones, cardboard tubes, clothespins, handkerchiefs, fabric scraps, stones, coins

+

Containers                                                                                                                   

Sorting Totem Boxes, egg cartons, cardboard fruit trays, graduated boxes

Transporting small paper bags, child sized buckets, baskets, boxes

Collecting nesting eggs (wooden or plastic), Matryoshka dolls, jewelry boxes, matchboxes, small recycled plastic jars, small tins with lids

 +

Expandable Parts                                                                                                         

Textiles large scarves, large fabric pieces, tissue paper, newspaper, softened Kraft paper, child-sized carpets or rugs, blankets

“Fences” cushions, interlocking cardboard pieces, over-sized lightweight blocks, Hula Hoops, jump ropes, long, lightweight cardboard tubes, fold-up cardboard screens

Cardboard Messages: Teapot

 (mug by my college buddy Jeremy http://www.oguskyceramics.com/shop) We're planning a little adventure for Father's Day....something involving a bike ride and a picnic I think? I saw this idea in a book called, "Japanese-style Interior of Living" that I checked out from the library. I thought it was a sweet alternative to a card.

What's your plan for Father's Day? Are you going on an adventure?

Beautiful DIY Cardboard Storage is HERE!

All I can say, is it's a great feeling to start with an idea, work with it for more than 6 months, and get to this place.

I'm so excited to share

this pattern

with you! It started basically as a way to solve a problem I was having:

How do I organize my kid's toys? (the little ones)

which led to other problems:

How can I make something that's just right for them?

How can I make it out of cardboard?

How can I make it strong?

How can I make it recyclable?

How can I make it beautiful?

Well, curiosity can lead you down a long and winding path.

Mine included a re-acquaintance with high school geometry, learning more about photography and lighting, the search for affordable copyright free music, video editing, cardboard sourcing, explorations in color and pattern (ultimately inspired by the divine Japanese kimono), tool and material testing and lots and lots of watching kids play (the best part)!

I ended up with

Totem Boxes.

A set of sculptural stacking boxes (the base of one box fits the top of another) that double as a nightstand, stool, ottoman or table and stool set for children. You can leave them plain, or decoupage them with decorative paper.

What do you do with them?

Put your favorite stuff inside. Yarn, yo-yos, matchbox cars and trucks, Legos, rubber stamps, fancy hats, scarves, alphabet magnets, musical instruments, play-dough, cookie cutters, wooden blocks...

I don't exactly understand the magic, but my kids love cleaning up with the Totem Boxes. They make sorting the toys like another way to play.  You can easily move the boxes to where the mess is because they are modular, and then stack them up as you go. They look good sitting in the corner of your room, if you do nothing else. To me, they are functional sculpture.

And they're not just for kids. Someday when I'm a knitter, I'm going to make a set with a hole on the side for the yarn to feed out while I knit. I'll prop up my heels on the boxes as I relax and make gorgeous socks....

But are they durable enough for kids to use?

Months of testing and strength to support the sitting weight of a 150lb. adult makes me say YES.

What do I need to make them?

You will need lots of strong cardboard (like the kind that banana boxes or diaper boxes are made out of) and basic supplies like a pencil, white glue, a metal ruler, binder clips or clothespins and a utility knife. You will also need access to the internet, a computer and a printer to print out your pattern pieces and directions.

How long does it take?

Anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour for the first box, but after making about 20 of them, I've got it down to about 30 minutes a box (without decoupage). Best thought of as a weekend project. Say, if you wanted to make an amazing gift for your 2-5 year old niece or nephew's birthday.

Where can I buy the pattern?

The pattern costs $12 and is currently available in my Etsy Shop: https://www.etsy.com/shop/cardboardcollect

It includes instructional PDFs in US Standard and Metric with written directions and a pictorial guide with links to 3 original video tutorials. The elementary school teacher in me did my best to appeal to audio and visual learners, so if you get frustrated by traditional patterns, fear not.

A Cardboard Glue Comb & Sneak Peak

I'm in the final stages of pattern testing my first cardboard furniture pattern! While my husband sweetly refers to this step as the first pancake, I feel like I have flipped so many many pancakes already!

Last week I was on a mad search to find a glue comb (oddly a tool that is uncommon in the U.S.) to put in (yay!) my new Amazon Affiliates shop. A putty knife was the closest stand-in I could recommend. Then my brilliant pattern-testing mother told me about the piece of cardboard she cut from the handle of a box to make into a glue spreader.

Wonderful, I thought, one less product; one less thing to buy. But I was surprised at how well this solution really worked when I modified it slightly by removing a strip of paper to expose the corrugations. Identical glue stripe-ing!

If you make a second glue comb you can use the two combs to clean each other before the glue dries, otherwise  just trim off the end and then cut another strip to make more corrugations.

OK, I'm in the home stretch now, hopefully I'll have the pattern up any day now (whew!), and here's a little sneak peak for all of you who follow the blog:

A Month of Making

I'm feeling a little out of practice posting to the blog, but also so excited to get back in the groove. April has been a wonderfully busy month! I sent my daughter to Japanese preschool for the first time, and have been commuting for about 45 minutes a day, 5 days a week by bicycle to do the pick ups and drop offs. The weather has been beautiful and I've loved it, but I do find myself wondering about those cold wet rainy days to come? Hot, hot August in Tokyo?

Taking the opportunity to be with my family and just be a "maker" for the month was deeply exhilarating. At times I filled every unused corner of our living room with towers of boxes, and bags of cut cardboard scraps. My family never flinched; a true testament of their unfailing love and support.

So many new ideas were born out of my sabbatical, that I'm planning to observe two cardboard sabbaticals every year. I can't recommend them enough, and if you've ever felt that you needed a break from blogging, take one! and don't apologize. Let's keep blogging humane. We all need a break sometimes, particularly when we are working to bring something thoughtful and creative into the world on a regular basis.

One thing I thought about this month while I was hacking away at boxes, is what do all of you want to see more of? I've put together a quick survey so I can actually find out what you think instead of just imagine....and I would be really appreciative if you could take the time to fill it out!

It's a painless 3 question survey: Click here to take survey

And yes, I didn't forget about that big project I promised to tell you about! It's a pattern and video tutorial I'll be releasing very very soon for sale in my Etsy shop. It's the first pattern in a series of  cardboard furniture pieces that I've been designing over the past 6 months. I'm sure I'm being way too secretive about it all, but I've got lots of great posts coming up in the mean time and hopefully a few sneak peaks of the pattern too.

It's good to be back.

A Cardboard Sabbatical

Hi!

Just a note to let you know I'm going on a little cardboard sabbatical for the month of April. I've got some surprises in store for you at the end of the month and I'll be devoting all my time to getting them ready. I'll also be sending my daughter off to preschool for the first time, catching tadpoles in the river with the girls every day I can and sewing my heart out for Elsie Marley'sKCW.... it's bound to be a heart pumping, joy filled month, and I can't wait to get started! See you May 1!

Yours in Cardboard,

Amber

Honey Comb Cardboard

A beautiful new cardboard find this week: Honey comb. I only have a few pieces dug out of a fruit vendors recycling pile.

We've come up with one way to use it so far...in our toolboxes.

Cardboard & Cap Peg Rack

Now that my daughters are almost 2 and almost 4 they've started borrowing my jewelery. I'm not quite sure what that means about my taste in jewelery, but they are scaling my 4 foot high bookshelf  to get to it. As a compromise, I've decided to sacrifice access to some of my sturdier, more sought after necklaces in the hopes of safeguarding some of the more fragile and precious stuff.

Contraband jewelery stuffed into little boxes, purses and paper bags was popping up all over the house.... as if a colony of Leprechauns had taken up residence. In an effort to deter further looting, I bargained that some kind of necklace depot would distract them....

I started with just one box, which gave me 6 lengths of cardboard approximately the same length. I then assembled my caps.

I had a variety of laundry soap and maple syrup caps and some of the caps magically fit together, but some did not. I ended up using Washi tape to secure them. I didn't have enough caps, so I borrowed a cylindrical block from the block bin. You can use whatever you have on hand for this project, it doesn't have to be plastic caps. Blocks, corks, tiny plastic or glass bottles; all can do the job.

Next step was arranging the caps and tracing around them. I used a box cutter to carefully cut around the circles on the top layer, and then a serrated knife for the layers below. It's helpful to try and cut just inside the area that you traced for a snug fit.

Last step was gluing the layers together. I used one layer as a backing and didn't cut any holes in that layer. I also spread a thin layer of glue slightly diluted  with water over the top piece of cardboard to preserve it and keep it from showing dirt and fingerprints. To hang the rack I threaded paper cord through the corrugated channels and tied it off.

Spring Planting in Cardboard

Last year I started experimenting with planting in cardboard even though nearlyeveryone around thought I was crazy. Well, not one of them was shy when the time came to harvest our cherry tomatoes...

This fall I made a simpler kind of planter utilizing the planter hangers that I have, and torn pieces of scrap corrugated cardboard tucked and layered inside. They over-wintered well, and to freshen the boxes up in the Spring, I just added new cardboard to the outside edges and removed some of the inner layers.

Spinach, salad greens, cilantro and nasturtiums...we can't wait for our little sprouts to start popping up! And we're curious to see how our experiment with the glass case (Used for displaying traditional Japanese dolls- there are always tons of these at the recycling shop) works for our tomato starts. We're hoping to transform it into a home for adopted caterpillars......

Fort Building with Banana Boxes

I've been doing a lot of work with banana boxes recently and we've had so much fun  building little places to hang out in....and then knocking them down!

Cardboard Play Days 4&5

[slideshow_deploy id='3717'] This week was filled with lots of play, lots of cardboard, and lots of discovery. I learned a lot by watching children and parents play and build together during the two events that took place.

The first was a play event for my daughter's Yoji group, a play group that meets weekly at the local Jidokan (a kind of youth community center). The other was at a local park called Kajino Koen. The Kahjino event hosted lots of local groups that support the park, like Play Park: a local adventure play organization that facilitates weekly play events for children.

Play Park built an amazingly tall and steep wooden slide with wooden handholds, as well as over-sized hammocks, rope walkways, and braided swings. I'm in love with the work that they do and I'm hoping to deepen my relationship with their community in the coming year.

A few things I learned this week:

• Crayons (bright, waxy pastel ones) play really nicely with cardboard. Markers wander, and paint is a pain to clean up.

• Parents love to play like children. Children give them a great cover for indulging in the kind of play that they used to do.... and at the same time children fall in love with their parents all over again. There is an amazing playful connection that Is kindled, and when I see parents leave cardboard events smiling, I know an imaginative little fire has been lit and will grow into something more.

• pre-teen boys like to kick cardboard boxes and stab them with screw drivers. At first I bristle, and then I watch for a while and see the totally therapeutic effect of this activity for them. They calm down, start talking to each other and then start to cooperate and build. Cardboard stabbing boys, I welcome you, and I love to see the amazing things you can build with cardboard.

• Girls can bring a quiet measured intensity to building with cardboard. I love watching them deliberate while considering all the details like widows and shelving...their excitement is contagious.

• I love connecting with people through cardboard, seeing parents build something for their children, seeing children build something else for themselves, watching three year olds rip their older brothers around in the back of wheelie cardboard boxes.

• What can I say? I'm hooked.

Resources: How to put wheels on a box and instructions for Tanaka Satoshi's Giant Cardboard Windballs

Cardboard Kid's Chair Makeover

Our beloved cardboard kid's chairs are almost 3 years old. They've been in desperate need of a makeover for a while now, and I thought those of you who read the blog would be interested in seeing how cardboard furniture wears over time.

These chairs are regularly used as vaulting boxes by my two little ones so I can't imagine a better stress test.

I started by addressing the corners that had worn, and cut small strips of cardboard to use as shims.

I glued them into the worn areas to give the chair corner rigidity again and reshape the edge.

Next I trimmed off any loose cardboard and traced the different pieces of the chair one at a time onto (new) post consumer cardboard and cut the pieces out. After some gluing and clamping, this is what we got:

Not bad huh? Almost as good as new......and the chairs will be even more smashing after we treat their exteriors to a new look:

.....catch that in my next post.