The Playful Battle of Fort Cozy

Time to bring some of the great outdoors into your classroom! How? Build a fort meant for your students’ cozy escape!

In the rush of hectic city life, kids will love the rare opportunity to create a space all their own. To start, provide materials like large cardboard boxes to create your fort, giving students the opportunity to use other open-ended materials to create doors, windows and other decorations they’d like to make their cozy structure their own. Alternatively, you could drape sheets or blankets over a series of chairs or pile them on the floor, stack pillows atop one another and include class puppets or stuffed animals for companions inside the fort. The object here is to give students agency to use their imagination to design this space. After all, this fort is a place where, in their home away from home, they can feel most at ease.

Next, re-create the feeling of being outdoors by making cutouts of trees, leaves or even hanging class-made clouds from the ceiling above their fort. To add an extra layer to this re-creation, find playful, realistic outdoor sound effects playlists on streaming services like Spotify or YouTube to help feed their imagination while they’re building and relaxing in their fort. Oh, and don’t forget the most important part of an indoor fort—picture books about exploring the great outdoors!

To support this unit, use the Creativity Page Gettin’ Tucked in to Your Cozy Zone.