Children of the Corn Box
Living in the cold, cold North means many days spent inside. This week we've had a particularly long cold snap, where the temperatures have not reached above 0 for 4 days now. We have a heat wave today... high of 3!
When it's this cold, it's hard to get out with the boys. They say you can get frostbite on exposed skin in under 10 minutes in this weather... and I'm lucky if I can get all three boys out of the van and into a store in under 10 minutes - with their short legs and ice-covered parking lots, walking quickly is just not possible (well, their short legs, ice-covered parking lots, and the fact that I'm a huge klutz, falling almost as much as my kids).
All this being said, we have to find many things to keep us entertained inside - sometimes for days on end - without going out. The corn box is one such thing. We have a rather large box (about 4x2x8) full of feed corn. It's sort of like an inside sandbox - but full of feed corn (which is much easier to clean up).
Ezra has such a phenomenal imagination... We pulled the lid off the corn box the other day and all three boys were wrapped in imaginative play for a good 30-40 minutes - even Obed (who didn't even try to eat any corn, to my great shock!). Ezra started out "working" on a construction site. The rakes were graders, the Barrel O' Monkeys were concrete mixers, and the tube we had was a roller. Then he was working at a movie theater and got a plastic Ziploc baggie to make microwave popcorn to sell to the people going to a movie. After that we played "hide and seek " with the plastic m&m in the corn.
I'm thankful for our box of corn... it offers many hours of entertainment (we've had it now for 3 years). It's a cheap investment (55 pounds of corn for $5). And it is a great outlet for imagination for the boys.
When it's this cold, it's hard to get out with the boys. They say you can get frostbite on exposed skin in under 10 minutes in this weather... and I'm lucky if I can get all three boys out of the van and into a store in under 10 minutes - with their short legs and ice-covered parking lots, walking quickly is just not possible (well, their short legs, ice-covered parking lots, and the fact that I'm a huge klutz, falling almost as much as my kids).
All this being said, we have to find many things to keep us entertained inside - sometimes for days on end - without going out. The corn box is one such thing. We have a rather large box (about 4x2x8) full of feed corn. It's sort of like an inside sandbox - but full of feed corn (which is much easier to clean up).
Ezra has such a phenomenal imagination... We pulled the lid off the corn box the other day and all three boys were wrapped in imaginative play for a good 30-40 minutes - even Obed (who didn't even try to eat any corn, to my great shock!). Ezra started out "working" on a construction site. The rakes were graders, the Barrel O' Monkeys were concrete mixers, and the tube we had was a roller. Then he was working at a movie theater and got a plastic Ziploc baggie to make microwave popcorn to sell to the people going to a movie. After that we played "hide and seek " with the plastic m&m in the corn.
I'm thankful for our box of corn... it offers many hours of entertainment (we've had it now for 3 years). It's a cheap investment (55 pounds of corn for $5). And it is a great outlet for imagination for the boys.
posted by Kirsten at
5:43 AM
4 Comments:
That is SUCH a cute idea! I'm going to keep that one to use in a classroom when I become a teacher.
Great idea! I have been trying to come up with some new indoor play ideas to keep us from going crazy this winter. Do you have any other ones that you can recommend?
Awesome idea...love it!
I miss the corn box :(
This must be a difference between boys and girls. My girls just do not make up scenarios such as this. They hold their dollies, walk them in the stroller, dress them, make them talk, but never create a whole "story" to go along with it. What do you think? Boy thing? Or are my girls just wierd?
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