Package design for kids: a 30-minute K–2 product box activity
What it is: a K–2 mini-project where students design the outside of a box for a pretend product so a customer can tell what is inside without opening it. Students learn that packaging protects a product and also tells customers what it is.
Time: about 30 minutes. Grade: kindergarten to 2nd grade.
Materials: small clean boxes or paper folded into boxes, paper to wrap them, crayons and markers, safety scissors, glue sticks, a few pretend products (a block, a toy animal, a crayon).
- Hold up a plain box. Ask: "What is inside? How could you know?" Then hold up a box with a big drawing of a crayon on it.
- Talk about two jobs of a package: keep the product safe and tell the customer what it is.
- Each student picks one pretend product and wraps a box in paper.
- Students draw the product on the front, add its name, and add one more clue on the side, like a color or the number inside.
- Line up the boxes on a "store shelf." Classmates guess what is in each box before it is opened.
- Ask: "Which boxes were easy to guess? What did those designers do?"
Safety: use safety scissors and an adult for any box that needs cutting. Use pretend products too big to fit in a mouth for younger students.
Differentiation: students who need support decorate a box that already has a large outline of the product. Students who are ready add a price and a short line like "new" or "for ages 5 and up." English learners can label the product with one English word from a picture bank.
Quick check: ask a student: "What are two jobs a package does?"
Save this activity to your library so it is ready when you need it.
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About this resource
- Shared by
- @UpOnlyLearning · Curriculum team
- Posted
- Oct 31, 2026
- Type
- Lesson plan
- Grade
- Grades K–2
- Subject
- Business
- Language
- English
- License
- Free for classroom, co-op and tutoring use. Please don't resell.