The Family That Built a Time Machine
Sophie's family builds a cardboard time machine and imaginatively travels through dinosaur times, castles, space, and beaches together before heading to bedtime.
- 5 min read
Sophie woke up one Saturday morning to the sound of clanging and banging coming from the garage. She rubbed her sleepy eyes, slipped on her fuzzy dinosaur slippers, and padded downstairs to investigate.
“What’s all that noise?” she asked, peeking through the garage door.
There stood Mama with a toolbox, Papa with a pile of cardboard boxes, and her big brother Leo holding what looked like an old bicycle wheel wrapped in Christmas lights.
“We’re building a time machine!” announced Leo proudly.
Sophie’s eyes grew as wide as pancakes. “A REAL time machine?”
Papa chuckled and tapped his nose mysteriously. “Well, it’s real if we believe it is. And we need your help, Sophie. Every great time machine needs someone with a big imagination, and yours is the biggest we know.”
Sophie clapped her hands with delight. She loved family projects, especially ones that involved time machines!
For the rest of the morning, the whole family worked together. They used cardboard boxes for the body of the machine, painting them silver with swirls of purple and gold. Leo attached the bicycle wheel to the side as a “time selector dial.” Mama added blinking lights from their old holiday decorations. Papa found shiny buttons and switches from his toolbox to stick all over the control panel.
But Sophie had the most important job of all. She drew pictures on paper plates – a dinosaur, a castle, a rocket ship, and a sunny beach – and taped them around the inside walls.
“These are our destinations!” Sophie explained. “We can visit anywhere and anywhen!”
By lunchtime, the time machine was complete. It stood in the middle of the garage like a magnificent, glittering box of dreams. There was just enough room inside for all four of them to squeeze in together.
“Where should we go first?” asked Mama, settling onto a cushion inside the machine.
“The dinosaur times!” shouted Sophie.
“Then let’s set the dial,” said Papa, turning the bicycle wheel until it pointed to Sophie’s dinosaur drawing. “Everyone ready? Hold hands now – we always travel through time together.”
Leo pressed a big red button (that didn’t actually do anything, but looked very official), and they all made whooshing sounds together.
“We’re moving through time!” cried Sophie, watching the Christmas lights blink faster and faster. “I can feel it!”
Mama started making stomping sounds. “Do you hear that? I think we’re here!”
They all tumbled out of the time machine into the garage, but now it wasn’t a garage anymore – not in their imaginations. It was a prehistoric jungle!
Papa roared like a T-Rex, stomping around on his tiptoes. Leo pretended to be a Triceratops, putting his fingers on his head like horns. Mama became a gentle Brachiosaurus, stretching her neck up high to eat invisible leaves from invisible trees.
Sophie giggled and ran between them all, playing the role of a clever Velociraptor, until Papa the T-Rex scooped her up with a growl and tickled her tummy.
“Time to go somewhere else!” she squealed.
They all piled back into the time machine, holding hands again. This time, Leo turned the dial to the castle picture.
WHOOSH! More blinking lights and silly sound effects!
When they emerged, Mama grabbed a wrapping paper tube and declared herself a knight. Papa found a colander to use as a helmet. Sophie wrapped herself in an old curtain and became a princess who could do magic, while Leo used a trash can lid as a shield.
They had a grand adventure, defeating an imaginary dragon (who turned out to be quite friendly and just wanted someone to play catch with).
Next, they traveled to outer space, where they floated in slow motion around the “spacecraft,” discovering new planets made of cheese and stars that sang lullabies.
Then they visited the beach, where Papa made wave sounds, and they all lay on the garage floor pretending to feel the warm sun and build sandcastles out of air.
As the afternoon sun began to set, casting golden light through the garage window, Sophie yawned a big yawn.
“I think,” said Mama softly, “it might be time to travel to one more place.”
“Where?” asked Sophie sleepily.
“To bedtime,” Mama smiled.
They all climbed into the time machine one last time. Papa turned the dial to point at nothing in particular, which meant it was pointing at “home” and “now” and “exactly where we need to be.”
Sophie snuggled between Mama and Leo, with Papa’s arm around all of them. The Christmas lights blinked slowly, gently, like sleepy fireflies.
“That was the best Saturday ever,” whispered Sophie.
“It was,” agreed Leo, “and we can travel through time again tomorrow.”
“The wonderful thing about our time machine,” said Papa quietly, “is that no matter where we go or when we visit, we always go together.”
“That’s what makes it truly magic,” added Mama, kissing the top of Sophie’s head.
Sophie smiled, her eyes growing heavy. She looked around at her family, all squeezed together in their magnificent cardboard time machine, surrounded by bicycle wheels and blinking lights and pictures of everywhere they’d been.
“I love our family,” she murmured.
“We love you too, Sophie,” they all whispered back.
And there, in a silver time machine that smelled like cardboard and possibilities, Sophie drifted off to sleep, dreaming of all the adventures still to come. Because the best journey of all wasn’t through time or space – it was being together, right here, right now, with the people who loved her most.
The Christmas lights blinked one more time, and then, as if the time machine itself was tucking them in, the garage grew quiet and peaceful.
Until tomorrow’s adventures would begin again.
The End