Rainy Day Fun: The Lion, The Witch, and the Cardboard Wardrobe

Last Christmas I took my four year old son to a high school production of Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe.  I wasn’t sure just how much he would get from it, or even if he would enjoy it, but he has been Narnia-obsessed ever since!  I am currently reading the novel to him, and even though there are no pictures, he loves it.  I am also really thankful that it is giving me the opportunity to reinforce some important biblical truths, C.S Lewis was genius to include so many parallels.

Recently we moved and we had so many great boxes left over.  One particularly blustery cold day a few weeks ago we decided to have some fun with our boxes, and created this magical cardboard wardrobe.  It turned out wonderfully, it was a great combination of a fun art/craft project followed by a lot of creative play time.  Here is a re-cap of our box wardrobe day.

We started with one of those large wardrobe boxes, the kind that have a metal bar along the top for hanging clothes.  We cut the back of the box on each side down to the bottom to create a large flap.  Then at the front we cut down the centre and across at the bottom and top to create the doors.

Next I gave the kids some brown (water soluble!) paint and brushes and got them to work on the doors and the sides of the wardrobe.  While they were doing this I QUICKLY painted a Narnia-like scene on the inside of the back flap.  (QUICKLY because I have a crawler and although she was interested in something else at that point, I did not want her crawling in wet paint)

I added some yellow “accents” to the front of the box to make it look a little more like a wardrobe.  After the paint was dry I hung some coats along the bar and then folded up the back flap and tucked the top end back into the box so that it was standing straight up.  The idea was that the children would climb into the wardrobe and then push the back flap open to step into Narnia.

It worked!  We had a great morning role playing The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe.  My four year old was Peter (with the armor)  My three year old son was Edmund, My 17 month old daughter was the Lion (whether she knew it or not!)  and unfortunately I got to be the witch.  We also had our play castle tent in Narnia, which kind of reminded me of the make shift tents on the Narnia battle field.  Lots of fun!

I hope you enjoyed this post, thanks for stopping by!