On a recent visit to the library we borrowed a book called Out of the Box. It is full of ideas for things you can make using cardboard boxes.

My children quickly bookmarked projects they would like to try, and last weekend we got out all the craft materials and set to work. They chose to make these lizards.

You need: scissors, tape, an empty cereal box, empty toilet roll tubes, pens, acrylic paint, paint brushes and an empty egg box.

After much cutting and taping we ended up with three constructed lizards like this.

Next came the messy part: painting. Naturally, one child got acrylic paint all over their trousers, which resulted in an emergency load in the washing machine. Oops!

The other child didn’t want to paint theirs, so we ended up with a red lizard, a blue lizard, and a naked lizard.

Not bad, but they are missing eyes and stripes and other lizard-like details. A task for this weekend, perhaps? Click here to see how they eventually turned out!

Previous Creative Parenting posts: pumpkins, castles, dinosaur eggs, inside the box, slime, TMNT, The Crown.