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- Cover your mailboxes with colored construction paper.paper image by AGphotographer from Fotolia.com
Kids love sending and receiving mail. Help them make their own mailboxes so that they can experience the joy of receiving notes from you or their friends, without worrying about pesky details like postage and trips to the post office. Everyday objects like shoe boxes and plastic containers can make enchanting mailboxes with a little bit of creativity. - A mailbox made out of a shoe box is easy for the youngest children to use and decorate. Take a shoe box with a hinged lid, and cut out pieces of construction paper the same sizes as the top and sides. Have your child decorate and color the construction paper with stickers and markers or crayons. Help her glue the decorated papers to the shoe box in the right places, using a glue stick or school glue. After the glue has dried, use a sharp scissors or a box cutter to make a narrow slot in the top of the shoebox, big enough for an envelope to slide in. (Do not let your child make the slot.) Keep the mailbox in a high-traffic area, and slip in a few notes for your little postal worker to deliver. (The hinged lid makes it easy for little fingers to open and close again.)
- If your next-door neighbor has a child the same age as yours, consider getting your families together to make a shared mailbox. For this, you'll need a plastic container with a tight-fitting lid, preferably hinged. Decide where you'll keep the mailbox; there may be a space under the fence or a gap in the hedge where the mailbox can rest. Have the kids decorate the container with stickers, pictures of their favorite cartoon characters and their names. Then, cover the container and lid in clear contact paper so that the decorations don't wash off in the rain. Add a flag by cutting out a flag shape from red construction paper. Glue a Popsicle stick to the flag to give it the strength to stay upright. Use a sticky hook, and loop tape to attach it. Cut a small square of the loop side, and stick it onto the side of the mailbox. Cut a small piece of the hook side, and attach it to the bottom of the flagpole. When someone puts in mail, pull the flag off, and reposition it upright. When the kids collect the mail, pull the flag off again, and reposition it horizontally.
- A mailbox made from a cereal box is good for mounting on the wall outside a bedroom door. Take an empty cereal box, and remove the top flaps. Wrap it in construction paper or non-glossy wrapping paper. Have your child decorate the paper with markers, stickers or stamps. If he is old enough to write his name, let him write it himself across the front of the box. Hang it with masking tape low on the wall so that your child can reach in and take the mail out.
Shoe Box Mailbox
Plastic Container Mailbox
Cereal Box Mailbox
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