For my kids. To build forts and things. I’ve been looking online but all the suggestions are for milk cartons, and I’m in Canada. We get milk in bags, of course. I could ask all the neighbours to start saving their juice containers, but I thought, there must be another way. I’m not sure about precision-cutting out of corrugated cardboard, but I might be able to do it.
So, crafty people and engineers and general lateral-thinking people- how can I make cheap, fairly sturdy lightweight building blocks for my kids?
(What I think would be cool, although it might not work, is gluing velcro dots or strips to them to make them stick. Maybe alternating male/female velcro. So it’s harder to knock over and wreck structures).
Around here, if you go to the liquor store and ask nicely, they’ll probably give you all the sturdy boxes you’ll ever need. They come in different sizes, and are already block-like. Downside, they are liquor boxes, usually with brand names proudly displayed, so may raise some eyebrows I suppose…
Over on Amazon, they’ve got Melissa & Doug cardboard bricks you can buy. Current price is $32.39 for 40 of them, and that’s less than a buck a block, so maybe that’s in your price range, I dunno. Pretty reasonable.
But, if you wanted to be a cheapskate, in the photos there, there’s a picture of what the blocks look like before you fold them into bricks. Just use an Exacto knife or something and cut some out of your cardboard using this pattern, which to judge by the other pictures, makes a very strong little cardboard brick.
When my mom taught preschool, she bought a couple of sets of the similar product that’s mentioned on that page, that have a uniform red brick pattern and are all the same large size. The kids loved them. They’re lightweight but surprisingly sturdy (far sturdier than a typical box, as the folding pattern yields internal bracing reinforcements), and survived years of abuse by a horde of children.
Editing to add: addressing the OP’s size constraints on the size of the blocks, my link would be far too large… I think I was just happy to see someone else knew about them!
Why didn’t you post this months ago? Lillith Fair had half a basement full of milk-carton bricks that she has had for twenty years! They are moving to a new state and her daughter is out of college, so it was time for them to go to the great recycler in the sky…you guys could have worked out a deal!
Too late to edit- I think I’ll go house to house, asking everyone to save their 2L juice cartons. If I can get ten families saving them we’ll have enough to make a castle in no time.
I’ve been saving boxes from stuff I get shipped to me, and from general products, for about 3 years and I’ve been able to make a ton of blocks. Almost everything I’ve bought in the past few years has either been shipped in a box or is packaged in a box that is building-block-sized and shaped.
I stuff the empty boxes with the packaging already inside (once I take the products out!), packing peanuts (left over from other stuff I’ve had shipped), crumpled up newspaper and empty plastic grocery bags.
I tape the boxes shut with duct tape or packing tape, whichever I have around.
The final step is covering the boxes with Contact Paper. I don’t necessarily get paper that looks like wood or like stones. It doesn’t matter to the kids.
What my friend and I found was that it was easiest to measure, cut and wrap along one side of the box, with a little bit of wrap around the edges, then do the same around the other side of the box. Much easier than trying to wrap it like a present.
So far they’ve been very sturdy. Since they’re filled with stuff, kids can’t collapse them by sitting/standing on them. The Contact paper is wipe-able. They love the variations of sizes. My cousin’s kid really loves getting a Slinky to walk down a ladder of boxes!
The best thing is that I’m able to recycle all of the packaging I get! Everything gets used!