Don’t throw away those jello boxes! They make great puzzles and toys.
Take the empty box and stuff it with a little newspaper. This isn’t absolutely necessary, but it does help the puzzles last longer. Tape the box closed.
For a puzzle, pick out your paper. You can make puzzles from scrapbook paper like I did here, or from an old calendar picture, an enlarged copy of a photograph, printed clip art, or even a child’s drawing. Cut the paper into rectangles. I find it helpful to arrange my jello boxes and lay the paper on the top of them. This helps me make sure I’m cutting the paper in the right direction.
Once your paper is cut, you can either glue it or tape it to boxes. And there you have a one of kind puzzle! What’s neat about this is that you can go as big as you want as long as you have the boxes. You could even do a poster though I’ve never been that ambitious, or had that many empty boxes at the same time.
A twist on this project, that is great for preschoolers, is to do heads, middles, and legs. Have your children draw heads on some boxes, middles on others, and legs on some. For very young children you can draw outlines that they can color. As you can see from the photo, you don’t have to be a great artist for this to work. My own children used to love to make scary monsters. They had great fun changing out the parts to create new ones. You can also stack the boxes horizontally instead of vertically and do animals the same way. The first should have a head, the middle one a body with two legs or wings, and the last one should have two more legs and a tail. The animal ones were always a favorite at our house.
I always liked these homemade toys. They were inexpensive, easy to replace when worn, and fun to make.
Also See:
The Toymaker – online printable toys and gifts