Sofy and Hanna have reached the stage when they are very into role play and it’s the best! I am not a fan of forcing them into certain role-playing. But when I saw Sofy trying to play “masak-masak” with a cup and spoon she found and her building blocks as ingredients, I was heartbroken. Sofy doesn’t have such toys at her place while Hanna has tons of cooking tools at hers. They always seem bored when they come here so I decided to build them a kitchen.Despite my mother being insistent on buying one from Ikea, I decided to build them one out of cardboard so that it can easily be thrown away in the future whereas one bought would need to be sold or given away which seemed like a loss to me. I thought making one would be less wasteful.

Of course, Pinterest standards is way too up there so I got some rough ideas and just made do with the materials I had at home. Check these Pinterest ones I totally fell in love with.

The kitchen I made for them is out of an old calendar box my mother got from work. It is not very big so I decided to include only key features they could play with. The box could only fit a stove, oven and a sink with a tap. Not much by my standards but it’ll do for now. I do hope to expand their kitchen soon.

The size of the box is important because not only does it give you an idea of what could be included in the play kitchen but also height-wise since you want everything included to be reachable by the kids. Also, think of the overall color scheme you are going for. I went for black, white and silver based on cheap materials I could buy or already had.

(I didn’t take many photos of the process.)

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I cut out holes for the sink, tap, and oven. The tap was made out of old toilet rolls and a paper towel roll. The sink is made of an old curved plate. Many Pinterest ideas included a bowl but I wanted to use what I already had at home. I covered it all with aluminum foil because it is the easier to mold for odd shapes like the tap and sink.

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I went for a hot plate electric stove top. I had already bought cooking pots and pans from Ikea (~$30). I measured out 4 circles according to the pots. Cut out the circles from cardboard and covered in black paper. I used double-sided tape to secure the black paper. For the stove top, I wanted a silver top. It was rather tricky working with aluminum foil because you don’t want too many wrinkles to create a flat surface.

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Cut a flap out at the side of the big box to create the oven. Then cut out a whole from the flap and tape down clear plastic wrapping to create the oven window. Inside the oven, I used an old box to create an oven rack. I also decided to add unused fairy lights inside the oven to create the cooking illusion. I thought it would be fun for them to see it function like the real thing.

I covered the flap or door of the oven with color paper. I used an old Bonjela box as the handle of the door. I also included 2 small strings at the sides of the door to ensure it doesn’t open beyond the maximum since the play kitchen would be placed on additional boxes to give it some height.

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The last step was to cover the rest of the play kitchen with white paper to give it a sleek look. I also added 4 buttons for the stove and  2 turning buttons for the oven. I used old toilet roll that was cut into thirds. I used some flower arrangement wires to allow the buttons to be able to turn. I covered the buttons with black paper. Finally, I used a marker to create markings on the oven for temperature and timer.

Voila!

I can’t wait for them to play with the kitchen this weekend. Something new to play with in the new year. You can also use old furniture like many of those on Pinterest. I didn’t have any so I decided to use cardboard.

Materials used

• Cardboard box
• Toilet rolls
• Paper towel roll
• Extra cardboard
• Black/White color paper (depends on your color scheme)
• Aluminum foil
• Double-sided tape
• Masking tape
• Fairy lights
• Old small box
• Flower arrangement wires (from Daiso)
• Black marker

xoxo