Cardboard Treasure boxes

We have had a bunch of very large cardboard boxes around from a bathroom remodel. My husband wanted to recycle them right away… but nope, I had to sneak in an activity or two with them first before I could see them go.

My mom gave me this truly awesome idea for a big cardboard box.

Go dumpster diving!

I brought the big box in the house and filled it with trash.

Maybe not real trash. But newspapers and cereal boxes and other containers that I found in our recycling bin.

Not sure if you know, but if you’ve been reading for awhile, we really like to upcycle our recyclables before they leave the house. We have a stash we keep in the corner just for these kind of things.

While I was wadding up newspapers (to take up more room so I could fill the box), I asked Henry to find me 10 toy cars.

Find other fun ways to play with newspapers. Make a sticky spider web to throw them into, or make it a newspaper throwing game!

I asked for a specific number because I wanted to make sure we knew how many there were so there wouldn’t be any lost.

I then sneakily hid those toy cars in the ‘dumpster’ cardboard box. I hid them in the containers and in the wads of newspapers.

Once I had the dumpster full, I dropped the boys in to find the 10 lost toy cars.

And that’s all it took for a morning full of giggles.

And all the lost toy cars were found. We double, probably triple checked to make sure.

I really thought they’d be super easy to find. But they literally had to completely empty the cardboard box to find the last one.

• Cardboard Wine boxes
• Cardboard keepsake boxes
• Cardboard Storage boxes