By Alyssa Davis

Doing crafts with your child is an excellent way to pass the time on a rainy day. You can build a fort from cardboard boxes that your children will love, and they will have lots of fun making the fort as well. When finished, the fort will provide them with hours of playtime fun. And in the process, you’ll be making use of cardboard boxes that would ordinarily end up in our country’s crowded and overburdened landfills. For this reason, the fort-building project a good lesson for your children on how to reuse, repurpose, and recycle to help the environment breathe more easily!

Choosing Boxes

To build a fun fort, there are a few supplies that you will need. Obviously you will need a selection of good cardboard boxes. The boxes that a television or refrigerator were shipped in are ideal; if you can find these larger boxes, your fort will be truly fantastic. Check with local home centers for cast-off boxes of this size. You can also use smaller boxes that are fastened together. When selecting boxes, be sure to select only those that are safe for the child, and that don’t have any sharp fasteners or staples exposed that can injure the children playing inside or outside the fort.

Safety First

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rv3fYvte4WE[/youtube]

When deciding to what extent the child can help you construct the fort, take their age and their abilities into consideration. You may need to do all of the cutting of the cardboard boxes. If you are using smaller boxes pieced together, you may be using utility knives and sharp scissors, both of which are not good for small hands. Plan to do the cutting of the windows and doors, but be sure to allow the kids to mark off where they want them. Your little ‘pioneers’ can safely tape smaller boxes together and help in planning stages.

Decorating the Fort

Once the adult-only parts of building the fort are completed, you can then bring in the troops. Allow the kids or child to have fun decorating the fort. Give them an ample supply of crayons, markers, tape, glue, paper bags, construction paper, glitter, and so on to decorate the fort at will. Provide them with an old pillow case for a curtain, blankets for camouflaging the fort, and small throw rugs for the interior decoration.

More Considerations

After the fort is complete, you can plan on your kids wanting to keep it around for a long time. Because of this, it may be wise to allow the kids to build this fort in an area of the home that has enough room to accommodate it indefinitely, such as in the basement, play room, or recreation room. You will find that by constructing the fort in an area where you can allow it to remain for the long term, your children will get hours of free entertainment, even on rainy days.

With a little time and effort, you will find that this fort-building project will not only take up a few hours on a rainy afternoon but that your children will end up with a fort that they will love for some time into the future!

About the Author: Alyssa Davis is a home style expert who writes regularly for Metal-Wall-Art.com and is especially knowledgeable on decorating with

orange metal art

and

gold metal art

.

Source:

isnare.com

Permanent Link:

isnare.com/?aid=628507&ca=Home+Management

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