Make a City... in a Cardboard Box!

This is a great rainy day project. Get everyone involved and make your own city in a box. All you need is a cardboard box, some pens and any old toy cars, blocks or people.

 

• Start with an empty box 

Ours was from Amazon (it came with our new hand blender and tin opener, exciting stuff!!!) the size we used says 'G20' but this will work with other sizes obviously.

• Glue down the internal flappy bits (technical term)

• Sketch your road layout with a pencil

I used a matchbox car as a guide for how wide the roads should be. Small requested a roundabout it was a tight squeeze but I just managed to fit one in.

• Once you are happy with the road layout go over the outside lines with a Sharpie or similar felt tip pen

• Draw some buildings around the outside walls

Top Tip - Use a tipex mouse for the road markings.

Small drew us a Tetley Tea factory, a school, flats and a Tesco. I added a town hall and proper road markings (though the backwards arrows are infuriating to Small)

• Add some detail as you go.

At Small's request we added a bus stop, a zebra crossing and a disabled parking bay outside Tescos.

I began popping in some cars to photograph but she just couldn't wait :)

Top Tip: We added a tunnel out of the city by cutting a flap out with a craft knife (then Small added a joke-tunnel so she could trick the people in the cars - she has either been watching either Chitty Chitty Bang Bang or Roger Rabbit)

The city has been getting played with for a couple of weeks now and new buildings keep getting added around the walls!

It has been brilliant value for money!!

 Here are some more suggestions:

• Build a second  cardboard box city and link them up (maybe each kid could do their own design?)

• Add a train track, a wooden track coming through a tunnel in the corner could be fun.

• Build buildings and bridges with wooden blocks or with lego

We found it most fun when we just all got stuck in drawing different buildings for our vehicles to visit.

What would you add to your cardboard city?