Imaginative Play With Play From Scratch #Spon

In an age filled with electronics and step-by-step instructions for every toy out there, it’s hard to encourage your children to use their creativity and imagination.   Children are constantly looking to adults (or electronics) to entertain them with what to do and how to do it.  They get frustrated when parents tell them just to make something up.

When we were contacted by Play From Scratch to try out their products we were both excited and a little skeptical.  After all, it’s just a bunch of cardboard boxes, tubes, and tape.  Why would someone pay for that??  Well, this is why…

Jamie’s thoughts:

Nutty’s birthday party was the perfect time to bring out the Play From Scratch Creative Party Pack!  I opened up the world famous box of boxes and the enormous tube of tubes, laid everything out, and gave the girls two rules: 1) Use your imagination, 2) Have fun…

The girls promptly got to work choosing their boxes, picking their tape, and forming teams to work on things.  I was amazed at how they just dug right in!  They made umbrellas, castles, kaleidoscopes, clowns, and “I don’t know what to call it but it’s awesome” stuff!

I got tons of positive feedback from the girls saying how much fun they were having and how “awesome this stuff is!”  The only problem, I didn’t give them enough time to play with it.  They spent about 45 minutes making their creations before I had to move them on to the next activity.  That wasn’t nearly enough time and most girls asked if they could take their boxes/tubes home so they could finish them.  Hint:  Give the children a ton of time to play with this stuff!

My only negative feedback is also from the girls.  They would have liked at least one roll of thicker tape.  All the tape is the same width and they wanted different widths for more excitement.  We ended up grabbing some duct tape because a few girls wanted some tape to be thicker.

Lindsi’s thoughts:

I am going to fully admit that when I received a Box full of Boxes and a Tube of Tubes along with some colorful tape I was skeptical.  I opened them up and set them out on the playroom floor and waited to see what would happen. Nothing….nothing happened for several days. They simply sat there. Until……..my eldest son finally asked me “mommy, can I play with these boxes?” Talk about embarrassment on my part. I never even told them they could play with them! Oops!

We had several play dates this month and each time I let the kids know that they were allowed to build and create whatever they wanted from the boxes, tubes, and tape. My fears were realized when I noticed that time and time again my kids couldn’t come up with something creative to make. I feel really bad, but I guess this makes them a product of today’s world. Kids nowadays are spoon-fed all activities, sports, and “creativity.” So much so that they have little imagination left.  I remember the days when I was little playing with my mom’s Tupperware bowls, the large salad bowl made the perfect hairdryer for my beauty salon. My imagination had not been stifled by the modern conveniences of today’s world. Do I think this is a great product? Absolutely! Do my kids have the creativity for it at this point? Nope =(

Play From Scratch does offer Go Creative Cards which help to spark ideas for kids like mine.  I definitely think we could have benefited from those!

Conclusion:

While we had two totally different experiences with the Play From Scratch products, both of us agree that with the right group of kids, these boxes of boxes and tubes of tubes make the perfect supplies for imaginative play.  Is the money worth it for simple cardboard?  YES!  Why?  Because everything is already meant to go together which makes less work (and interference from) mom and dad!

Side Note:

Much to Nutty’s dismay, Jamie did let her friends take their cardboard creations home after her birthday party.  Nutty wanted to keep everything for herself to keep creating.  She managed to take all the scraps and the entire day after her birthday to make her own house complete with a table!