Giant Building Blocks

We came across some giant lego building blocks last year at Petrosains Discovery Centre in Kuala Lumpur (OK - so funded by oil & gas company Petronas - but totally awesome museum for little kids)*. 

I had a look online when we got home to discover that Lego no longer make these blocks and the ones that are floating around are insanely expensive.  Luckily we were watching TV one day and saw a segment of OURS which showed a playcentre using recycled boxes as blocks.  I thought - hey I can paper mache and paint them too with Phineas and then we've got our own recycled blocks to play with PLUS if they get squashed we can just recycle them.  Awesome!

Each step is kid capable stuff so this is something you can do together.  It is time consuming, but it's an activity, not a chore so you can make more boxes as you use up stuff from the pantry.

1.  Fill box with scrumpled paper from old magazines / newspapers.

2. Tape box closed with masking tape (not sellotape).  Otherwise don't worry about taping it at all as you can just seal with paper mache.  This is as far as the playcentre got for their blocks on the DVD which would work just fine, but I like my blocks to look less like abandoned marketing and more like rainbows!

3.  Papier mache using strips of newspaper and wallpaper paste.   Once dry, paint with leftover acrylic test pot paint.