When Unlabeled Boxes Stop Casting Spells

Restoring wonder – An early childhood educator describes a classroom moment where a once-magical cardboard box no longer turns into instant pretend play—then connects it to how screens, structure, and constant stimulation can quiet children’s own wonder.

When a box is no longer a castle, the silence that follows is hard to ignore.

In a preschool classroom of 4-year-olds. an empty cardboard box was placed in the center of the room—no label. no instructions. no purpose given. A few years earlier. that same simple box would have instantly transformed into something magical: a castle. a race car. a pirate ship. a cozy home for tiny animals. This time, the children stood around it, waiting. One student finally asked, “What is it supposed to be?”.

The question didn’t land like mockery or confusion. It landed like uncertainty—an interruption to something that used to be automatic. The educator, Hema Khatri, says that moment made her realize a change that runs deeper than play.

Children today. she argues. are still “just as bright. curious and capable as ever.” What has changed is how they engage with the world. Khatri describes students who hesitate to begin open-ended play without direct instruction. They wait for something to be defined for them instead of defining it themselves.

In her classroom observations, she often sees children repeating lines from television shows or mimicking characters from online videos instead of creating their own stories. Even the pause before pretend play lasts longer. The ideas come slower. The confidence to imagine feels weaker.

Khatri is careful with how she frames that difference. She says it is not a sign of laziness or a lack of intelligence. It is. instead. a reflection of the environment children are growing up in—fast paced. highly structured. heavily influenced by screens. When children spend more time consuming content than creating it. Khatri says the part of the brain responsible for imagination gets less opportunity to grow. Like any skill, she adds, imagination weakens when it isn’t practiced regularly.

Screens, she insists, are not the enemy. Technology can teach, connect, entertain, and inform. Many children learn letters, numbers, languages, and songs through digital tools. The problem arrives when screens replace play instead of supporting it.

Khatri describes what ready-made content does to the imagination process. Screens provide worlds already built—characters, voices, sounds, colors, and stories already created. “There is nothing left for the child to imagine,” she writes, and children move from being creators to being viewers.

In the past, boredom often led to creativity. A child with “nothing to do” would invent something: a stick became a wand. a blanket became a cape. and a cardboard box became a castle. Today, even a few seconds of boredom can be quickly filled with a device. The silence that used to give birth to imagination, she says, is replaced by noise, movement, and constant stimulation.

In her view, wonder doesn’t fully disappear. It simply “falls asleep”—until the conditions for it are present again.

When children pretend, Khatri argues, they aren’t only playing. Pretend play is where they practice communication and language. emotional expression. empathy and understanding. planning and problem-solving. cooperation and negotiation. and confidence and independence. In a world that demands creativity, adaptability, and emotional intelligence, she adds, imagination is not optional—it is foundational.

What stands out in Khatri’s message is where she places responsibility. Restoring wonder, she says, doesn’t belong to teachers alone, and it doesn’t belong only to parents. It lives in the space between them. The change. in her telling. happens when home and school move with the same intention—when adults protect the space for imagination together.

She offers specific ways families and educators can work in the same direction: make space for unstructured play. leaving time with no agenda. no instructions. and no screen; even thirty minutes a day can help. Offer open-ended materials such as boxes. fabric. paper. paint. blocks. tape. water. and natural items—because these invite imagination far more than expensive. pre-designed toys. Let boredom exist. treating a child’s “I’m bored” not as a problem to fix. but as “an invitation to imagine. ” paired with questions like “What could you do?”.

She also suggests asking open-ended questions—“What is this becoming?” “Who lives here?” and “What happens next in your story?”—and creating daily screen-free moments by choosing a time each day when screens are put away and protected as imagination time.

Finally, Khatri emphasizes communication across home and school: a simple conversation with a teacher can center questions such as what a child is interested in lately, what adults see the child creating in class, and how that curiosity can be supported at home.

A louder. faster. more digital world doesn’t change what a box can be—or what a child can do with time and trust. Khatri closes by describing a quiet waiting: waiting for silence, waiting for time, waiting for trust, waiting for space. The real question, she suggests, isn’t only what children have lost. It’s what adults are willing to return to them.

And somewhere in the middle of a classroom, with a box left unlabeled, castles still have a way of rising—one moment at a time.

early childhood education imagination preschool unstructured play screens family-school partnership social-emotional learning wonder