Thinking Thursdays: Spice art up with bento boxes

Our art and craft sessions have sorta been stuck in a rut.  Usually its been alot of messy painting, where I just let the boy get dirty and experiment with paint, or the usual crayons or colour pencils.  Since most art session occur when I'm washing the dishes after lunch (just before his bath), I've been rather reluctant to give him materials that he might need more help with, such as glue.

However, recently, I came across this post with these oh-so-cute bento art boxes for kids, and thought I'll try to make one for the little boy to just make his art and craft sessions a lil more interesting.  So for starters, I left it pretty simple, just a bunch of punched out shapes (so glad for my paper punches!) and glue:

And some of his old Crayola crayons and oil pastels:

Added a small sheet of stickers, and we're all good to go.  The boy was rather excited when I showed him the box, and enthusiastically got to work:

I was pleasantly surprised, as the last time we tried using glue sticks he needed quite abit of guidance for the smaller bits of paper, but now he was more or less handling even the little flowers and leaf punch-outs pretty confidently.  

And guess what?  The box kept him busy for more than 30 minutes, and he would have kept on going if I had not dragged him off for his bath and bedtime!  At the end of the session, the whole paper was filled with punch-outs, which he proceeded to scribble on with his oil pastels.  I had to promise him that he could continue after his nap!

Guess I'll keep this lil box at hand and will experiment with filling it up with different materials for him to work with.  I like how the box keeps everything neatly contained, and encourages mixing and matching of materials/mediums during the creative process.  And smaller versions would be great for toting around outside to keep busy little hands occupied.

Do you have art boxes at home?  What do you fill them with?