Create short skits inspired by the imaginative things you can explore with a cardboard box, incorporating characters, setting, and action. This group activity helps children collaborate and practice divergent thinking.
Materials Required
- Cardboard boxes (1 per pair or small group)
- Colored markers
- Colored paper
- White board or large paper and markers
- Scissors
- Tape
- Staplers and staples (optional)
- Device to watch the short video Adventures of a Cardboard Box
Instructions
- As a group, think about the following questions:
- What does it mean to “think outside the box?”
- When have you “thought outside the box?”
- Watch the short video Adventures of a Cardboard Box about a boy who is thinking outside the box.
- Afterward, talk about the video:
- What does the boy do with the box?
- What is imaginative about what he has done?
- In a group (2-5 people works best), create a 1-2 minute skit that tells a story of a box. Include characters, setting, and an action. The skit is acted out silently—show actions non-verbally.
- Using the prompts below, brainstorm some different things that you, as storytellers, can do with a box. Write these ideas on a white board or on a large piece of paper.
- What can the box be changed into?
- How could you interact with the box once it becomes something else?
- Brainstorm some ideas for characters (who are you?); setting (where are you?); and action (what are you doing?). These ideas can also be written on a white board or large paper.
- Select one of the ideas, collaborate to tell the story and transform the box by using colored markers, paper, scissors, and tape.
Additional Tips
Try this add-on activity:
- If there are many groups, create a story that includes all the transformed boxes.
- Where might you find all of these transformed boxes and characters?
- Would it be one place where you all are or separate places that you are visiting on a journey?