The next time you polish off a box of cereal, think twice before tossing it into the recycle bin. Cereal boxes make for fantastic upcycled crafts! Proof? This easy car racetrack.

To start, begin cutting down the long side of the box, about two inches in from the edge. Continue to cut all the way down, around the bottom, and back up the other side.

Now snip the corners where the sides meet the bottom, so the piece lies flat. Repeat this step on the other side of the box, again two inches in from the edge. Join those two pieces together and you’ll have one long track. We did this with two cereal boxes, so the image below shows the resulting tracks from both boxes.

Line your race tracks with colored duct tape to create the perfect racing surface.

You can add embellishments such as pipe cleaner hoops for your cars to travel through.

Later, we were feeling especially fancy and cut construction paper into decorative “flames,” which we then taped onto the pipe cleaner hoops.

Now ladies and gentlemen, start your engines!

Travis got the hang of giving his cars a push (rather than keeping a hand on them) quite quickly, and in fact his cars beat mine in many races!

A super easy and super fun way to race inside on a winter day.