📚 Learn🔬 STEM🧩 Problem solving
📦 Cereal Box Tower
Empty cereal boxes make the lightest, loudest, safest tower.
Ages
1–3
Duration
15 min
Cost
Free
👶 Kid challenge
Easy
🧑 Parent energy
Light · no prep
⚠️ Safety first
Stay in the room. Light empty boxes only, nothing that could topple onto them.
You know your child best — supervise the whole time and skip anything that isn't right for them. See our Terms.
Why this is good for your child
- ✓Balance
- ✓Size ordering
What you need
Empty food boxes
How to do it
- 1Save three or four empty boxes of different sizes.
- 2Stack biggest to smallest.
- 3Knock it down. Obviously.
How it actually goes
The honest version — including what "going well" looks like at this age.
- ⏱ 30-second set-up
- Thirty seconds: put empty food boxes on a tray or a clear bit of floor, and sit down next to it before you call them over.
- 🧑 What you do
- Show it once, slowly, without talking over yourself. Then hand it over and stop helping unless they ask.
- 👶 What they do
- Line things up, count out loud, and notice what's the same.
- ✅ What success looks like
- At 1–2 they'll tip it out and put nothing back. That's the work — emptying comes long before filling.
- 🧺 How to put it away
- Everything back into one basket or tray, carried back to its spot by them. Naming the spot out loud is what makes it stick.
- 📈 When they outgrow it
- Older? Count it, then ask how many there'd be with one more.