Next time you finish a box of cereal, don’t throw it out! Instead, encourage your kids to get creative and upcycle it into their very own homemade puzzle craft!

Raise your hand if you love a good trash-to-treasure project! If so, you’re going to love today’s homemade puzzle craft for kids.

There’s something great about giving new life to something that was bound for the trash. Using recycled materials for crafting with kids is awesome because it’s budget-friendly, environmentally-friendly, and doesn’t require running to the store for specialty supplies. Because if you’ve been around here for long, you know we’re all about keeping things simple!

Everything you need for this homemade puzzle craft is probably already in your house. Here’s what you’ll need:

• empty cereal box
• paper
• crayons/markers/colored pencils
• scissors
• glue stick

That’s it!

I’ve been wanting to do this activity with my kids for several months, and it recently became the perfect way to spend a chilly Monday morning. The kids didn’t have school, but they did all have the sniffles, so we were stuck at home and needed something creative to focus everybody’s energy.

Cereal box puzzles to the rescue!

My three kids (ages 4, 7, and 9) all got really engaged in creating their own masterpieces and turning them into puzzles. My 7-year-old actually got really attached to his drawing and decided in the end that he didn’t want to cut it up, but that’s fine by me. The fact that he spent time on his art, used his imagination, and cared so much about the picture he had created was wonderful.

There was a time when I might have said to him, “But we’re supposed to be making puzzles. That’s the whole point.”

But I’ve since learned to be okay with letting projects evolve and turn out differently than what I envisioned. Because the point isn’t the puzzle. The point is the creative process. And that can look different for different people.

Here’s how to make your own cardboard puzzle:

STEP 1: Cut a cardboard rectangle from an old cereal box.

STEP 2: Color a picture and glue it to the cardboard.

STEP 3: Cut it up into puzzle pieces, and then try to put it back together!

One of the great things about this project is that it is SO easy to adapt for different kids’ needs and preferences. Kids can choose what type of picture to color, how many pieces to cut it into, what shapes to make the pieces, and more.

Keep reading for the full instructions below!

Homemade Puzzle from a Cereal Box

Materials Needed:

• empty cereal box
• paper
• crayons/markers/colored pencils
• scissors
• glue stick

Instructions:

1. Cut out the front and back panels of an empty cereal box.
2. Trim the edges of a white piece of paper to match the size of your cardboard.
3. Draw a picture on the plain white paper. Fill as much of the page as possible so there will be lots of colors and shapes to use in putting together your puzzle later. (Note: You could draw directly on the plain brown side of the cereal box instead, but I wanted the colors to be brighter.)
4. Glue the white paper to the cardboard. (We glued ours to the brown side so that the colors of the cereal box cover wouldn’t show through.) Be generous with your glue stick and get all the way to the edges.
5. Cut the cardboard into puzzle-piece shapes. Cutting more curves makes the puzzle easier. Straight lines often make it more challenging. For younger kids you could keep it as simple as 5-6 pieces. For my older two kids, 12-15 pieces was the sweet spot.
6. Now, mix up your pieces and see if you can put your puzzle back together!
7. If you have multiple kids working on this project, invite them to switch puzzles and try to solve someone else’s!

Like this craft? Pin it for later!

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