Brittany McKnight, MS OTR/L



Welcome to the third installment of repurposed play where we take common household items and repurpose them into activities for our kiddos. Today’s activities are perfect for a rainy day when it’s too wet or cold to go outside, and the kids need something fun to do to beat the boredom (or any day when you’re looking for something new for the kids). Today’s item is… a cereal box!

We’ve compiled these six activities you can create out of cereal boxes to give you some creative inspiration! Click on the photos to link to the original articles.

King/Queen Crowns

This is a great activity to address coloring, scissor skills, and regulation with using glue. It is also easy to find decorations around the house. This can also spark creativity and pretend play skills!

Toy Car Garage

What a great way to generate those problem solving and scissor skills while simultaneously finding a low budget way to organize all those race cars!

Cereal Box Guitar

With scissors, a paper towel roll from our last repurposed play day, rubber bands, and tape you could have a musical prodigy or a family band on a rainy day.

Puppet Theater

Another way to address all of the developmental skills regarding fine motor and visual motor with cutting, decorating, and pasting, as well as speech in creating and telling a story.

Cereal Box Soccer

This might be my favorite cereal box game I found because not only does it work on those good crafting skills, but using straws to blow the cotton ball around is a great sensory activity to improve regulation by promoting deep breathing!

Cereal Box Puzzle

Another great visual motor activity and probably the one that requires the least materials. A cereal box, pencil, and a coin is all you need. Flip it over on the back and make lines, using a coin to make the rounded edges. This would be a good one to save the pieces in a bag for car rides and a waiting room activity.

For more repurposed play ideas, check out these ideas for sheet pans and paper towel rolls!