How to Make a Cardboard Box Fort With Your Kids

There are a lot of kids who have to stay indoors most of the time right now, much to their disappointment. That could lead to them getting antsy and restless. It could even just be a rainy or snowy day that keeps them indoors for the entire day, or even longer. Thankfully, there’s a brilliant and fun way to keep their boredom at bay, and it involves making a cardboard box fort!

Children love creating and designing forts. After all, we’re sure you made at least one blanket fort when you were a kid. If you are wondering how to make a cardboard box fort with your kids, then look no further because we’ll show you how. Here is how you can make an incredible cardboard box fort with your kids that they will absolutely love.

Make a Simple Cardboard Box Fort

The easiest way to make a cardboard box fort is to simply take one giant cardboard box and cut a little door/opening in it at the bottom of one side. If you happen to have a giant box, like one for a refrigerator, washing machine, or some other massive appliance or product, this will make the job of creating a box fort very simple. Usually, the cardboard boxes you have lying around aren’t big enough to use just one. In those cases, you can cut out the bottoms of similarly-sized boxes and tape them together to make a box tower that your kids can crawl into.

Make a Cardboard Fort Tunnel

If you have little ones, a cardboard fort tunnel is a creative take on the classic box fort. This is essentially a cardboard box tower placed on its side. However, you can add twists and turns to it, so it becomes more of a maze than a straight tunnel. Children love to explore secret tunnels. To make a cardboard fort tunnel, you will have to take several boxes of the same size, cut out their bottoms, and tape them together. You can also take the even simpler approach and just fit them snugly into one another. However, depending on how rowdy your kids get, their fort tunnel may lose its structural integrity too fast.

Make a Cardboard Box Castle

If you have more cardboard boxes (and time) on your hands, you can co-create an entire cardboard box castle with your kids. This would involve getting some packing tape, cutting out the bottom and sides of some of the boxes, to create a royal castle for your little ones. Cut ‘teeth’ into the tops of the highest boxes to recreate that iconic castle look. There is plenty of customization you can get into with this, so you and your kids can leave it completely up to your imagination!

Add Unique Features to a Cardboard Box Fort

There is a great deal of customization possible for cardboard box forts. You can make holes that act as windows, complete with taped saran wrap acting as ‘glass’ for your kids to look through. If you want to create a cardboard castle for your little prince or princess, you could even design a drawbridge with some string and poked holes on either side of the bridge. Another feature children enjoy is drawing tiles on their box fort and coloring them in, or sometimes going the extra creative mile and gluing on colored construction paper tiles onto their box forts. Combined with a child’s vivid imagination, this could turn into a fairy tale come true for them.

Make a Cardboard Box Fort With Your Kids!

The classic cardboard fort is a time-tested method of handling kids with pent up energy looking to do something fun and exciting. Allow their creative (and destructive) energies to run wild within a safe space when you make a cardboard box fort with your kids. Your children will grow up faster than you think, which is why giving them the opportunity to make a cardboard box fort is something that won’t last forever. Also, you’ll have a great deal of fun making them along with your kids.

You can manage to salvage some cardboard boxes lying around or get a cardboard box kit already specially designed for making fun, creative, and dynamic spaces for the imagination of your children to roam free!

Make-A-Fort has simplified the process of making a box fort even more effortless. Our exclusive fort kits allow you and your kids to create incredible forts, castles, mazes, tunnels, and more! There are endless play opportunities. With our kits, your kids could enjoy playing in as small or large of a fort that they want. All of our kits are made out of reinforced cardboard that provides strong, durable, and eco-friendly fun for the whole family, but especially for your kids.