Great excitement struck our village just before Christmas. Since we moved in to our house (down a steep slope with far-reaching views of Dartmoor), we have been unable to find an aerial tall enough to receive a decent television picture. So we reluctantly subscribed to a digital package that allowed us to watch four channels with a perfect picture. But not ITV. It didn’t subscribe to this particular scheme.

So, for three years we missed Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, Heartbeat, A Touch of Frost and Coronation Street. Imagine the uproar when ITV finally saw sense and, without warning, Emmerdale Farm appeared on the screen. We indulged ourselves all night, watching every flickering soap and every persuasive advert.

But my faith in digital human nature was soon to be destroyed. I was planning an assembly when a sleek advert worked its way into my psyche. It was for a television, a magnificent silver machine that came complete with cardboard box. A large box which, the voice implied, could stimulate any number of creative and fantastic play activities. The box could be a space rocket, a car, or a den. But, no, the voice was reassuring, you wouldn’t have time for such mundane pursuits. You would be too busy being interactive with your giant silver screen.

Well, excuse me. How dare you. Children should and must be encouraged to play with cardboard boxes. We don’t have time in school to foster these creative sparks. In fact Ofsted actively frowns on fun in classrooms so it is vital that parents put cardboard boxes high on the agenda. It is their role as home educators to provide such stimulation. It should be in the home-school agreement.

I was certainly stirred into action and decided that assembly plans for this term will be based on the biggest cardboard boxes that I can find. In the first assembly we packed all the Christmas decorations carefully into a box ready for next year. We talked about all the special things we could look forward to during the year before we celebrated the birth of our Lord next Christmas.

The following week, we saw what it was like to live in a cardboard box. We empathised with all the people in the UK and across the world who have nowhere to live. A willing volunteer curled up in the box for the whole of the assembly and we tried to think of what we could put in the box to make it a little more comfortable.

Later, we will pretend that the box is a suitcase for going on the school residential and we will learn how to pack items carefully. All underwear into a green carrier bag, all towels in the red one, jumpers in the yellow one. And the following week we will imagine that the box is Noah’s Ark and we can count in twos.

But the most exciting part will be the class challenges. Each class in turn has to come up with an idea for the box if they could have it for a week. The ideas will be put into our “speaking and listening policy” and then, quite justifiably, every class will have a box for half a term to stimulate their imaginations. Our children will learn the benefits of recycling and the power of imagination.

Perhaps one of them will become an advertising executive and design commercials for television manufacturers.

Val Woollven is head of St Andrew’s C of E primary school, Plymouth