Homemade Mailbox for Post Office Theme

During our post office theme week, I made a large mailbox that we could use for dramatic play. It was big enough for the kids to mail most sizes of paper, magazines and even larger envelopes. The center where I work put it in storage for now so I can’t get a picture of it, but I’ll explain how I made it the best I can. I took a medium to large sized shipping box and taped up all the edges so none of the flaps were open. Then I cut a long slot in the front that was made for the envelopes. In the back, I cut out a square flap door that left a space large enough for the kids to put their hands in the box and pull out whatever was in there. It was big enough for adults to do this too so the opening was pretty large. When closed, the door would almost be flush with the rest of the box. I kept it closed with three strips of Velcro that I found in the craft section. I put the strips right next to each other and added extra tape to the sticky part on the back to reinforce it because I knew it’d be pulled open over and over. I added another small part of a Velcro strip to make a handle that could be pulled.

I completely covered the outside of the box with white shelf paper found in the home section. My idea was to let the kids decorate the mailbox however they wanted plus cover up all the taped areas. I thought it would be fun for the kids to decide how their mailbox looked. It didn’t work out that way because the place where I work chose to use it for the hallway display for the theme. Then they combined post office with Valentines and they taped hearts on to it.

Finally, the next time post office theme came around, the hearts were removed and it was used the way I intended. The class enjoyed pretending to send cards, letters, and magazines and of course bills back and forth.