One box, many uses

This week's theme is "out the window" because I suspect there are a few things out there that Owen doesn't know the name of (have we ever talked about trees?  Does he know the name of a house?).   I made three fun projects out of a moving box and am pretty excited about them.

The first was this peekaboo house.  I got the idea from this post at I Can Teach My Child.  It was fun and easy to make (although if you make it, make sure to put the pictures down before you put on the windows... so hard the other way!)

Inside the windows are pictures of his grandparents and his parents.  Owen loves looking at it and naming them.  And opening all the "doors."  Next up: learning that a window is not a door ;) "door, door, door, door"

Then I decided it would be fun to have a flannel board.  There are tons of tutorials out there so I'm not going to go into depth with this, but I basically duct-taped two pieces of cardboard together, repurposed a receiving blanket by hot-gluing it onto the cardboard, and duct taped the ends onto the back.  Easy peasy flannel board.  At the time, I didn't have any felt so I cut out shapes to make a house, trees, etc and reinforced them with packing tape.  To make them stick, I tore off the velcro tabs on Owen's disposable diapers and taped them onto the back.  Oh, and the cotton is snow!  I plan on propping this up by the window and comparing what is on the  board to what is outside.

So then I saw that I had the rest of this box and was wondering what to do with it.  Well I turned it into a house.  Fun!  I did not spend much time on it because I know it will be destroyed within the next day or two, but I made a roof and cut doors and windows.

From the inside of the house, I drew pictures of what you can see out the window; one of the pictures resembles what our picture window looks like. 

 From the outside, you can open the tabs and see inside the house.. I used some pictures of Dora and Diego that my husband prints out every once in a while.  I just missed taking a picture of Owen trying to shove his head through the door, it was so cute, hopefully he will do it again!

And there you have it, three easy things to do with one cardboard box!