Stress toy: Squeezed to help manage stress and fear. Sometimes there’s not a hand to hold during needle sticks, suture removal, suctioning and the like. The stress toy can give the patient something to squeeze. It’s also a toy and will come in different shapes (fish, stars, cars, penguins, etc.)!

Folding ruler: A high-quality, colorful plastic ruler. Each square equals one inch. It can be folded so that only the odd numbers show, or so that only the even numbers show. It’s almost impossible to hold this without playing with it, so it can have a calming effect. It’s useful, too, with colored paper and pencils included.

Colored pencils: Chosen instead of markers because they won’t dry out, bleed on linens, pajamas, etc. They should last longer, too. The colored pencils come in a pack of 12.

Pencil sharpener: Kid-friendly and a necessity!

Jigsaw puzzle: There’s more to putting a puzzle together than just turning over the pieces and assembling the picture. In “HeadGames,” we suggest other ways to make it fun and interesting!

HeadGames: This is the heart of The Big Fun Box. It’s really where it all started. These are games we made up to try to keep us from going out of our minds. We found they helped us to relax and keep our minds on positive thoughts instead of feeding our fears. From counting cars to the “Magic Trick” to make us sleepy, “HeadGames” is full of our homemade fun. It also includes rules for card games and multiple ways to use many of the activities.

Find ’Ems: These are word search puzzles with the solutions on the back. They’re age appropriate with a bit of a nudge toward learning something new. For instance, in breeds of dogs, some of the words are Irish Setter, Border Collie and Beagle. But there’s also Affenpinscher and an Otter Hound—who knew?

Imagination Pad: 50 sheets of empty canvas. It’d be easy to give the patient 50 pictures to color instead, but using one’s imagination is a lot of what The Big Fun Box is all about. Patients can use the pages for notes, pictures, origami, etc. It’s for wherever they want their imaginations to take them.

A nice way to say “Thank you” notes: Now we’re taking the patient from being inwardly focused to start to notice the nice things people do for him/her. Thank you notes are fading from our culture, yet they still mean so much. These are simple notes that can be decorated with the colored pencils and the outline for the message is provided, in order to make it easier for the child to succeed in making someone’s day. We’re hoping the patients will enjoy doing something nice for someone else. They can make even more notes from their Imagination Pad. Envelopes are provided. Covering a wall with a collection of thank you notes can be a morale boost for hospital staff, too.

Plastic stencil: More fuel for getting the imagination going! Durable and easy to use.

Playing cards: Patients can play whatever games they know with cards and refer to “HeadGames” for some of our ideas.

Feedback card: We want feedback from patients to help us continually provide them with more fun! The more they tell us, the better The Big Fun Box can be. This is a self-addressed, stamped postcard to make it as easy as possible for the patients to give us their feedback.