Thursday, April 21, 2016

Thrifty Thursday: Turn a Cereal Box in to a Magnetic Puppet Theater


This was an individual project that my daughter made a while back in school. I had taken the pictures and put them in a blog post, but just never got around to writing the text to the post.

She had a lot of fun making the project and it took a little bit of time to do it but what I like is that it mainly used supplies we already had at home and re-purposed other supplies, like a couple of cereal boxes.


To turn a cereal box into a puppet theater you will need two cereal boxes or one cereal box and some poster board. The back wall or screen could be made from poster board or some kind of cardboard.

To start out with cut one side length out of your box and secure the top of the box closed. This opening that you will cut out will be where you will insert your magnets attached to Sticks.

Then paint your cereal box on the top and the sides. We use acrylic paint because the glossy part of the Box makes it hard for other paint to stick to. Acrylic paint can go on thick enough that you only have to do one to two coats.



My daughter was making a snail race for her Puppet Theater so she painted a racetrack and grass on the sides.

While that is drying, your child can work on designing a background that you will then tape into place.

Here you can see how we taped it into place. Also, while the box is drying they can make the snails or people or whatever else they want to move by magnets out of cardstock or poster board. It needs to be a sturdy type of paper. You can see the ones my daughter made in the very top photo. Also in that picture you can see how we use thick popsicle sticks and hot glued magnets on the end. Snails or other characters used will be attached to paper clips.

To make the characters move just slide the magnetic pieces through the opening in the back of your Puppet Theater and it will create a connection with the paperclip and allow you to move it.