Travis had remote Zoom schooling today, which meant I had to find a way to keep Veronika entertained, out of his way, quiet (well, mostly quiet!), but also be nearby and ready to swoop in if Travis needed my help. What could possibly tick the boxes to fulfill this criteria? A giant cardboard box of course!

I’d been saving an old box for a while, because Veronika has recently shown a desire just to … sit in them! She gets such joy from climbing into delivery boxes, the bigger the better.

For a spin, I decided to set up this particular box as a “dumpster”, an idea I spotted at Hands on as We Grow. Add recyclables like crumpled newspaper, saved snack boxes, and old sponges. Anything that seems like “trash” without actually being dirty will work!

It turned our that she didn’t love this full box nearly as much as an empty one. That said, she latched onto the sponges right away. Soon she was “cleaning” the box, which I guess made this the cleanest dumpster in town!

I helped her climb out and now those crumpled pieces of newspaper were perfect for target practice. Slam dunk!

Meanwhile, I had also hidden a few cars and trucks under the debris to see if she wanted to hunt for them. She didn’t show much interest in the hidden cars in the box, so instead I cut off one of the box flaps and tilted it like a ramp against our lowest stair.

Now, she loved zooming the cars down, and then started steering them up and down the ramp so carefully. I marveled at the control she’s developed playing with cars, for example always now turning them so the hood of the car faced forward.

Travis’s Zoom class was still underway and we needed to buy more time with the box. So next up was chalk! It turns out that sidewalk chalk shows up beautifully on cardboard, and was a novelty compared to crayons.

She told me she was drawing blue for a daytime sky, and then purple for dark! So I added a sun and moon, which made her so happy.

She kept drawing in the box for almost half an hour by herself after that. Mission accomplished!