Big and Little... The Office

BIG and LITTLE is back for September and the theme is office. Tomorrow Jillian will reveal her BIG pretend play office over at A Mom with a Lesson Plan..... but today I get to show you our LITTLE Office Tower made for some special toys. If you are new to BIG and LITTLE you can read about it here.

I found a shallow and sturdy grocery box for the office tower structure. To make the dividing floors, I cut two pieces of cardboard to size and glued them in with my hot glue gun. I also added a generous layer of sticky tape to withstand energetic play. The top floor was for Cakey's toy animal and the middle floor was for Boo's toy animal. We all decided the bottom floor should be a cafe. After all, those hard working office animals need their caffeine!

Making office art

The girls made little cardboard laptops and calculators for their animals. They also created some art for the office walls with crayons and cardboard. We got the stamping kit out to make little books. Cakey and Boo love stamping – they had a lovely time stamping everything and drawing in the little books.

Writing in the little office books

I stockpile little boxes – they all came out for this project. I covered the boxes in coloured paper to brighten things up. The girls chose their desks and we glued them in place... all ready for their laptops. We made bookshelves from sticky tape boxes. I cut them in half, we stacked them and taped them in place. The shelves were quickly filled with books.

For the cafe we made some bowls and cups from air drying clay. I made a vase and a coffee machine. The air drying clay was left to dry before it was painted. We use air drying clay regularly. It is a wonderful material – I must write more about it some day.

A visitor arriving by elevator

We realised we needed an elevator. I cut a taco box in half, Cakey hole punched it and threaded in a pipecleaner to make a handle. We attached a long piece of string to the pipecleaner. I made a hole in the side of the office tower and threaded the string through it. Now we could pull the elevator up and down. To stop the toy animals plummeting to the ground I stuck a wooden skewer into the cardboard floor. We could tie the elevator string around the skewer and the animals could get alight safely.

I hope you have enjoyed this month's BIG and LITTLE, it will be back again next month. If this is your first visit to at home with Ali – welcome. If you like it, you can follow along through our facebook page or subscribe via email or RSS. Cheers Ali

Linked to Serenity You, It's Playtime, Happy Hour Projects and Delicate Construction