by Brie After the flurry that is Christmas Day one thing is for certain. Our house is filled with boxes. Little boxes that toy trains came in. Big boxes that gifts from out of town came in. There are lots and lots of boxes.

My kids are past the stage where they are happy to just sit and play with a box instead of the toy that came with it. But they will happily play with boxes, once they are presented in the right way.

Boxes offer an awesome creative potential. Here are some of the activities we have done with them in the last month:

- Made a holiday wreath for the front door. I cut out two large rings and had the kids decorate them by gluing shapes cut out from coloured construction paper, like white snowmen and green trees. The finished products were hung on ribbon and suspended to a nail on the front door.

- Cut out letters of the alphabet and used them to create words with my 4 year old. I got this idea afetr volunteering in her kindergarten class one day and observing the kids working on their "at" family words. Now we have a bunch of "at" words we can make out of cardboard, moving letters around easily to create new words.

- Cut out three holes in the biggest boxes I could find. The boy enjoyed painting his. And then he pulled it over his head and chased me down the hallway. There is nothing like a box for some good robot/monster fun.