Kids show their creativity at ACC’s Cardboard Challenge

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This article was published 04/02/2017 (3286 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Assiniboine Community College gymnasium transformed into a cardboard playground Friday morning, giving kids the chance to be creative and use their imaginations.

This is the third year ACC’s early childhood education students have put on the Cardboard Challenge, inviting children, parents and staff to come play with cardboard boxes of all shapes and sizes, cardboard tubes, and any extra pieces that might have a purpose.

Kids dove in with no hesitation or restraint — building forts, tunnels, mazes, houses and towers.

Boxes were decorated as hats or outfits, and a variety of robots wielding cardboard tubes clashed among the ever-changing structures.

“It’s been really successful,” said Janet Berezowecki, an instructor with ACC. “It’s an event we look forward to every year — it’s tons of fun.”

The idea came from “Caine’s Arcade,” a short documentary film about a nine-year-old boy’s handmade cardboard arcade, and his dream of having customers. It received international media attention and started a worldwide cardboard challenge, said Berezowecki.

“It’s all about creativity and all the different developmental skills that children have and need to work on … it helps them develop in every single domain,” Berezowecki said.

The early childhood education students also benefit by getting even more experience with children of all ages, Berezowecki said.

“We were looking for activities to do with the students,” Berezowecki said. “Second years are learning about building partnerships with people in the community … so it was a really good fit to host an event.”

For the students, the event is so much fun it hardly seems like school work.

“It’s been fantastic,” said Kassidy Kalyniak, a second-year student in the early childhood education program. “It is so much fun to see the creativity that each child brings. One child will be making a spaceship and the next will be making a little house with a million feathers put on top … it’s awesome.”

Kalyniak said they’ve been collecting cardboard and loose odds and ends since Christmas.

“The kids are just free to use whatever they please … This year we added a maze, tunnel thing which the kids added on to, we have lots of paper tubes, we brought back the shredded paper to play in … It’s all free creativity, they are free to do whatever they want” Kalyniak said.

The students are hoping parents will see how much can come from a simple cardboard box and some creativity, Kalyniak said.

“Cardboard boxes usually get thrown out … but they can spend hours (playing with it),” Kalyniak said. “They make their own fun out of it. It’s just amazing how simple something can be and they’ll turn it into something else. It doesn’t have to be hard to entertain you’re kids … no one is bored here. Every child is just doing their own thing and they’re all content. It just blows my mind.”

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