Out on a walk, by the recycling point at the flats, there was a fridge box. A big one.
“That's a car.”
After that, every box they went past: “Car. Car.”
Nobody had planned any of it. In the afternoon a paper car came out and they went over it with felt tips.
Boxes went out on the floor, big ones and small ones. One child took hold of one, got a foot over the side, and sat down in it with a hand to hold. Then out. Then in again.
Two others went through the box tunnel on hands and knees. One of them stopped in the middle and sat down there. The other came in from the far end, crawled up, and sat down beside them inside it. When the first one crawled out, the second one crawled out too.
An adult put a small box over their own head. “I'm not here. Peekaboo.” Up and down it went. That got a laugh, and then a hand reaching for the box.
“Shall you do peekaboo as well?”
With the box over their head, that child lifted it off and laughed.
Another one wanted to be on top of a box instead, and stood up on it holding a hand, got their balance, and put both arms in the air.
An adult stacked a small box on a big one. One child picked up another box, put it on the one on the floor, and then went back for another.
The box this time was bigger than yesterday's, and an adult put a mat down inside it.
One child crawled in, stood up in there, then lay down on the mat and put both feet in the air.
Another went in with a doll and lay down next to it.
An adult stood the box up so the cut part worked as a door, and after that it was in and out, in and out, with the door pulled shut each time — or nearly shut.
Then somebody fetched the toy dishes in and had a meal in there on their own.
A big box with a bear's face on it. A child put a hand into one of the holes.
“What's this?”
“Who do you think is in here?”
“A bear!”
“That's right. And look — the bear has got a hole in its nose. What's that hole for?”
That child went right up and looked into it.
An adult held up a yellow ball. “Shall we roll this into the bear's nose?”
It went in — tok.
“Again! Again!”
“Your turn. Which colour?”
“Blue!”
It went in, rolled with both hands.
“It went in!”
Somebody else put a ball into the hole at the bear's ear.
“Ear!”
“It's gone in the bear's ear! That tickles — ha ha!”
After that it was a hunt for the holes. “Nose!” “Ear!” “Leg!”
One child rolled a whole handful in at once, making the sound of them all going in, and another put their face round the side of the box to see.
Empty boxes went out. One child put some toys into one and picked it up.
“Delivery!”
Another one went and got a box as well.
“What's in yours?”
“Mine's got a camera and a phone in it.”
“Let's colour them blue.”
“Can I have the colouring pencils, please?”
And then the two of them were colouring the boxes in.
Two or three of them got into the box aeroplane. One drove. Another picked up a handbag on the way past.
“Off I go!”
“Where are you going?”
“To the playground!”
“What are you taking with you?”
“I'll pack for you” — and a bag came over from the home corner with food and a camera in it.
An adult put a handle on a box.
“I've taken one of these with my mum. We've got one at home. But ours has wheels on it, so you pull it along.”
“Shall we put wheels on, then, and pull it?”
So an adult put wheels on the box, and after that it went round the room behind them with whatever they wanted in it.
They had drawn a postbox the day before, so a box came out to make a real one.
They felt it, and looked inside it. Then they laid a meal out on top of it and invited each other over.
The adults let the meal go on.
Later some tissue paper arrived.
“Oh!”
They tore it into long strips and scrunched it up, listening to it.
“It tears all the way down.”
“It crackles when you scrunch it.”
Then glue, and the paper went onto the box, and it was a postbox after all. They stood it next to yesterday's drawing.
“Yesterday it was a picture and today it's a real one”
Boxes of every size went out in the room, and two children went for the longest one.
“It's like a stick. What shall we do with it?”
They put one on each arm and held them out.
“Look how long this is!”
Then one of them sat down in a wide flat box with a long box in both hands.
“Look at this!”
And rowed.
The long boxes went down after that. A square one came over instead, and they cut one side of it open with scissors.
“This side is the way in.”
They wrote their own name on it and decorated it. It was a place of their own.
In the afternoon the long boxes came back as a road between one place and the other, laid out with turns in it, and they went along it to get to each other's.
A big box, cut into the shape of a rocket, stood in the room.
“What is it? Is it a house?”
“It's like a rocket.”
They started on it with dot paint and crayons, and then somebody said they wanted to paint it properly. So paint, and sponges to stamp with. They stamped and rubbed, and put their hands straight in and printed their palms.
“I touched something cold and my hand went blue.”
“It was hot, so my hand went red.”
“That's purple.”
“There's blue and light blue, so it's gone pretty, like the sea.”
“The red made the orange disappear.”
When it was finished they got inside.
“Let's go where the shooting stars are” — and food and a telescope came along for the trip.
“I'm the captain. The captain drives.”
“There's no window, so we can't see space.”
So an adult cut a window, and a head came out of it.
“We're going to space!”
“I'm going in the rocket”
The next day there were tools out, and bolts and nuts.
“The rocket's broken!”
They picked what they needed out of the basket.
One rubbed a saw along the window and the corners.
“There's a tear here.”
Another used the round end of a hammer, and then the pointed end.
“There's a hole here!”
That one went for tape and patched it.
One held a piece of wood with a hole in it against the rocket and turned a screwdriver at it. Another stood the wood up, put a bolt into the hole, and hammered it.
Another turned a screwdriver on a bolt of their own.
“The battery ran out, so I'm changing it”
The day before, they had put a lift into the castle they built, made out of a coffee carrier. Today they wanted one that was smaller, and neater.
They stood a long rectangular box on its end and fixed a pulley at the top of it. A string went over the pulley, and a small box hung on the end of the string.
Into the small box went the little dolls and figures they had made, and up and down they went.
“If you pull the string up it goes down, and if you pull it down it goes up!”
The box fridge had a door, and they opened it and shut it and put the food away.
“Milk has to go somewhere cold.”
“Vegetables go in the vegetable drawer.”
Then they took it all out again and cooked for their families.
“Babies can't have spicy food.”
“Dad has to keep his strength up, so he gets meat and vegetables.”
“What if somebody doesn't like vegetables?”
“Cut them up small, and then they can eat them.”
They handed the food round.
“This is the healthy restaurant.”
“If you eat a bit of everything you get strong.”
Then they gave the fridge a new feature.
“Our fridge is an AI fridge.”
“If you don't eat your vegetables it goes beep beep beep.”
“It only tells you the food that's good for you.”
So buttons went on it, and a screen.
“Carrots — green light!”
“Too many sweets — red light!”
“Dad needs his strength, so: meat recommended.”
“Babies get the food that isn't spicy.”
“Mangoes come from the Philippines, so they go in the Philippines part”