I needed tiny boxes for a display for Husband’s organizing company. I didn’t want to take two hours out of my day to run to the Container Store, so I thought I would construct a paper box or two myself.

It sounded easy enough to do. I jumped in with scissors and card-stock.

Turns out I was really making prototypes!

Designing a paper box was hard.

I knew the general concept of six sides, but I never thought about connecting those sides together.

After quite a few attempts I managed to get something that worked pretty well.

It included tabs to glue it together, as well as a tuck flap and dust flaps.  (I just learned those words – fun!)

You can teach math with it!

I didn’t design it like an engineer would. Instead I designed it like a mathematician.

It has squares, non-square rectangles, trapezoids and even an irregular hexagon.

Which makes it ideal for teaching math.

The downloadable worksheet/template includes discussion questions for both before and after assembly.

Share with your students, and don’t forget to let me know how it goes in the comments.

And a big fat thanks goes to my dad who converted my hand-drawn template to a properly sized image to use on the worksheet. Thanks, Paps!

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