It is a common scenario: A young child excitedly tears through the fancy wrapping paper, ribbons, and bows. She opens the box and removes the year's newest and hottest technological gizmo toy. After a few minutes of play, she puts aside the toy and turns her attention and creativity to the toy she prefers — the box. In fact, boxes are wonderful open-ended toys. Rather than running on batteries, they run on imagination!

Treasure Chest

Young children tend to find and collect little treasures. Many of these items may be meaningless and even bothersome to you, but they are dear to your child.

Make this project with your child and give her a special place to store her treasures.

• Assist your child in gluing on the paper to cover the shoe box.

• Provide her with many different materials to glue onto the box for decoration.

• Label the box with your child's name and find a special place to store it.

Box Train

There any many dramatic-play props that you can make with a box. This project is just a suggestion to help spark your own ideas. When cutting the rope, be sure that none of the sections is long enough to be a safety hazard.

• Arrange boxes to form cars of the train. The front car is the engine — the open side of this box should be down, as the engine doesn't carry passengers. The other boxes are open side up.

• Cut a small hole in the front and back sides of each box so that holes in all boxes line up.

• Connect the boxes with the sections of rope. Knot the rope ends on the inside of each box to secure them. A rope in the front can be used to pull the train.

• Let your child decorate the train with paint or markers. The train is then ready to carry its passengers.

Matching Boxes

Promote your toddler's problem-solving skills with this fun activity. You can do this at any time, but it's a particularly good way to use paper from a recent holiday or birthday.

• Choose a different color or pattern of wrapping paper for each box and matching lid. Wrap separately so that you can remove the lid once it is wrapped. If you wish, you can have your toddler help you decorate the boxes.

• Place all of the boxes in one pile and put the lids in another pile. Have your child match up the boxes with the lids.

Nesting Boxes, Stacking Boxes

This activity will teach your toddler about size, spatial concepts, and problem solving while having fun. You may choose to have your child decorate the outside of the boxes.

• Challenge your child to nest the boxes inside of each other. Alternatively, ask her to try to stack them and build a tower.

Shoe-Box Golf

This game tests your young child's motor skills and eye-hand coordination.

• Cut a hole in the center of the shoe box lid just big enough to fit the golf ball.

• Invite your child to decorate the inside of the lid with the crayons. (She can also decorate the rest of the box, but the inside of the lid is most visible as it is the playing field.)

• Invert the lid and secure it over the empty box with a couple strips of masking tape. You want to be able to remove the lid to retrieve the ball.

• Place the ball on the lid. Challenge your child to tilt the box back and forth and try to get the ball to fall in the hole.