Giant Recycled Box Town!

These modular building blocks are a variation on the giant cardboard blocks I posted about here and are great use for smaller boxes! Young city planners can use them with their train tracks, cars, and other toys! I used a cut piece of a sponge to stamp on the windows and a half of a toilet tube to stamp the scalloped roof tile design (and another toilet tube for the chimney).
supplies
assorted large boxes (*see below)
utility knife or scissors
hot glue
pencil
newspaper or drop cloth
paint
paintbrushes
small sponge
toilet paper tubes

1. If your boxes have too much printing on them and you’d like a plain box, you can turn them inside out. (See step 1 in Giant Box Blocks).

2. To make a pitched (pointy) roof, the wide flaps will be the two sides of the roof. (Let the smaller side flaps flop open for now.) Using a utility knife, carefully cut down the same length into all four box edges to lengthen the flaps to your desired roof length. Make a new fold to bend the roof flaps down to meet. Hot-glue the top edges together. Lift up a side flap and place it against the side of the roof. Trace the roof angle onto the side flap, and cut it with a utility knife or scissors to make it pointy. Test to see if it will fit under the roof once it’s flipped up. Trim as needed. Run a thin line of hot glue along the top edge of the side flap and press it under the roof. Repeat for the other side.

3. To make a steeple, as on the red-and-orange building pictured, make a skinny pitched-top box, and cut it open at the bottom. Put the bottom side against the pitched roof it will sit on top of, and trace that roof angle. Cut an upside-down V-shape out of the bottom, so that it can rest on the pitched roof. Repeat on the other side. Trim as needed.

4. Spread the newspaper out on the floor, and put the boxes on it. Paint the boxes and let them dry.

5. Use the sponge’s side and gray paint to stamp skinny rectangles onto the buildings, or cut it to stamp square or rectangular windows.

6. To make a scalloped, tiled roof, as on the dark blue house with the white roof, cut a toilet paper tube in half the long way, dip the edge into paint, and stamp on semicircles.

7. Glue on cardboard details like doors. Make toilet-paper- tube chimneys by cutting

the bottom at an angle to fit on a pitched roof, as shown.

8. Use your own toys, such as cars, racetracks, and animals, as props in the town.
**Extra note of caution: Please wash your hands well after receiving packages and set the boxes aside for 24 hours before handling/painting them, just to be safe (According to the National Institute of Health, the virus that causes coronavirus can live up up to 24 hours on cardboard)