Cardboard box sleepout mk.2

Two years ago our Scout troop had a cardboard box sleepout in my front yard, and the kids wanted to do it again this year. The boxes were assembled on our regular meeting night, helped this year by the fact that one of the parents had managed to find some really big boxes that were large enough to accommodate two people. Those who missed out on the big easy-to-build mansions still managed to construct some suitably elaborate palaces of varying degrees of robustness and comfort (in fact, some of the smaller residences would have been much warmer than the bigger ones).

On Friday night, some of the Scouts and I first went to see “Gang Show” (a Scouting theatrical production which was very enjoyable) before coming back to my place where some of the others joined us rather late at night. We had supper and finished setting up by choosing the best locations for their homes, adding their bedding, and taping up a few extra spots on the boxes.  They settled down reasonably quickly having managed to control most of their exuberance to a moderate level, despite the late evening and their natural excitement, and so probably did not annoy my forewarned neighbours!

The morning light revealed the scope of the cardboard box village (there’s actually another big box to the right of the shot below, and the boxes you can only just see on the left were part of a big construction (the entrance tunnel of which is shown above) that accommodated two Scouts). All up, there were 12 Scouts who braved a reasonably chilly night—it was 6° in the shelter under the balcony when I got up and it would have been at least two or three degrees cooler out in the open space of the yard.

Skip and I had been left with very few sizable boxes (and there was no time to construct anything much anyway), so we just grabbed a box big enough for head-and-shoulders (that’s Skip on the left; I was in the one on the right).

Once we’d had breakfast it was time to demolish things and tidy up before finishing up with a game of “Matthew, Mark, Luke, John” while waiting for the parents to come and pick up their kids after what seemed to be a successful and fun activity.