Castle Building Day

We built a castle last Saturday.

I started them off with this.

And left out a lot of boxes. A LOT.

A couple boys stopped by first. They stacked with style more than they built. Notice the telescope up top and the blue paper to cover up any legs keeping guard behind the castle.

And then the girls came through. They used more butcher paper, opened up boxes, went to town on the tape strips that I had pre-cut and asked for pipe cleaners, markers and scissors. I gave them safety scissors and cut the boxes myself to their specifications.

They were big on decorating. Each of the hearts up top has a different builder's name on it. 

I made them a princess puppet and they made her a bed to sleep in.

And rooms for themselves underneath in the dungeons.

I got my inspiration for this  drop-in program from Rachel's blog (sometimes I talk like I know her, that's how often I visit her blog) and the boxes from the generous produce staff at the local Safeway. Once I explained that we'd be using them for programming in the library, they were more than happy to open up the store room to me and all the apple and banana boxes that I could carry. If you're going to try this, make sure you ask a few days before you need the boxes so they'll have time to store them up.

The last thing we did for our castle project was to make a thank you card for the great guys who made it all possible.

The castle will stay up for a week. I anticipate happy story time babies, a few more "who farted?" jokes and many, many more changes to the structure of the castle.