Early years practitioners know what parents are reminded of every Christmas Day--it does not matter how long families spend carefully selecting the presents, the children are likely to spend longer playing with the empty boxes! Children are fascinated with boxes and practitioners can capitalise on this and support early mathematical development with this free resource. Boxes also lend themselves to the element of surprise. In this article, the author describes how to make the mathematical most of boxes with young children. She presents activities and experiences using boxes and discusses the importance of open-ended questioning. (Contains 2 resources.)