Scores of children got the opportunity last week to play with hall-of-famers.
Yes, the kids oohed and aahed. Their heroes? Not a hockey player or a super hero. The kids, who excitedly congregated at Innisfail Library/Learning Centre on Feb. 22, marveled at the 250 cardboard boxes collected by Innisfail Early Childhood Coalition for the town's first ever Cardboard Box Challenge.
The cardboard box, after all, achieved the highest honour as a play item in 2005 with its induction into the National Toy Hall of Fame at The Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, NY.
Reshann Butts, coordinator of Innisfail Family Day Home Society, was instrumental in organizing the local Cardboard Box Challenge after being inspired with a similar successful event last fall in Springbrook.
"It was really popular and so we thought we would bring it in," said Butts, whose coalition partners include Innisfail Parent Link Centre, Alberta Health Services, Chinook's Edge School Division, Innisfail Public Library and Henday Association for Lifelong Learning.
"I wanted to do something like this last summer but I didn't have the resources to bring this all together on my own so we hired a company out of Calgary called Motivention. We supplied all the boxes and they brought all the other stuff, like the little tinker shack and everything else."
Cardboard boxes have been around for hundreds of years but it wasn't until American Robert Gair produced the first really efficient creation in 1879 that it gained popularity for commercial use, and then recreationally for children and pets, especially cats.
For children, the possibilities for continuous play are endless. Cardboard boxes can be made into dollhouse furniture, and transformed into forts, spaceships, submarines, castles or caves. If the box is large, a child is catapulted to a place where the imagination offers limitless opportunities.
And the educational and social benefits are equally plentiful.
"It is getting them involved with each other. Parents are actually engaged with their kids and playing with them, which is huge for that bonding and playfulness with kids," said Butts. "Cardboard boxes teach them those critical thinking and problem-solving skills that are so important. There's a little bit of math in there, a little bit of physics and a little bit of gravity."
Tracy Davis-McMillan, coordinator for the local Parent Link Centre, said the timing of the inaugural event, held during school winter break, provided a chance for more parents and teenagers to be involved.
"There are all kinds of building going on here. And because there is no school there is also a few teenagers, which is really neat," said Davis-McMillan, whose agency helped set up, collect boxes and facilitate the event. "There are all kinds of informal mentoring between younger and older children, so it is a multi-age group. You can see the kids are having a riot."
Reshann Butts, coordinator of Innisfail Family Day Home Society
"Cardboard boxes teach them those critical thinking and problem-solving skills that are so important. There's a little bit of math in there, a little bit of physics and a little bit of gravity."
