Homemade Toy - Cereal Box Marble Run

This project was inspired by a blog post by Made by Joel.  I saw this blog post three years ago and thought it was great fun!  My daughter was still too young then to be playing with small marbles and I wasn't sure if she'd sneak a marble into her mouth while playing (choking hazard!), so this  idea was shelved for later.

Fast forward to five days ago...we were at the supermarket and little daughter asked me to buy her another baby doll or Barbie.  But since both her baby doll and Barbie collections are bursting at the seams, I tried to negotiate.  We made a round of the toy section and school supplies section and stumbled upon these marbles!  A mere P 20.00 (that's about half a US dollar) for about 50 pieces!!!  And when she saw it, she burst out in excitement, "Marbles!"  Yay for me!

To my surprise, the marbles were a great hit!  Not only with her but with her cousins.  They played with the marbles the night we bought them...and the next day...and the next.  There were marbles all over the house - on rugs, corners, behind the couch, by the dining table.  It was fun to watch them enjoying and experimenting with the marbles!  They rolled them down the hallway, flicked them and rolled them down a makeshift slide that they made out of our living room cushion.

Then I remembered Made by Joel's Cereal Box Marble Run!  I made them a couple of times for the boys at school and wondered how the girls would like it.  I saved two cereal boxes and made this marble run version in about 10 minutes.  I used masking tape to adhere the cardboard cutouts to the wall under the stairs.

Watch them go!

Weeee!!!

I followed Made by Joel's tutorial and left a little ledge at the bottom to keep the marbles from rolling out of the box.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that they loved it more than I expected!  One afternoon, my daughter spent hours (yes, hours!) playing with this marble run.

Made by Joel has a detailed tutorial on how to make one.  If you try it out, we hope you have as much fun with it as we have! : )