I wanted to do something crafty and we had so many boxes around the house that I knew we could do something with. That’s when I started looking up some cardboard craft ideas.

I found some cool human mazes, playhouses, and other structures made out of cardboard boxes, but the one thing I noticed that really caught my attention was a hamster maze.

We have an adorable Syrian Teddy Bear hamster named Bear. We bought him at Pet Smart about a year ago. This adorable hamster is larger than other hamsters we’ve seen and has the best personality ever!

How to Make a Cardboard Hamster Maze

If you’re interested in making something out of your leftover cardboard boxes from the holidays, and you have a friendly pet hamster, then continue reading to see how we made a simple cardboard box hamster maze.

First, we gathered our supplies to make a cardboard box hamster maze. All we needed was some packing tape, Scotch tape, a tape measure, scissors, and cardboard boxes.

We then chose one box to be our “base” for the cardboard box hamster maze. Since we knew the sides were too short, we measured the flaps so that we could tape the box around the edges to be taller.

Next, we had to cut the flaps of our base box for the cardboard box hamster maze with scissors, and tape the sides upwards so that the base box became “taller”.

After we taped the flaps upward, our base box was ready to start planning out our cardboard box hamster maze. My youngest kiddo wanted us to determine where the start and end were before we made a trickier maze pattern.

As shown above, we made a basic layout that would get Bear the hamster from start to end in one path. This was the start of our next step in making our cardboard box hamster maze.

Our youngest son took to drawing out his plans for the cardboard box hamster maze for Bear the hamster. This took quite a bit of time as he drew, erased, drew again, analyzed the cardboard box hamster maze setup and then finally we had a plan to go by for making our finalized cardboard box hamster maze.

We added a couple tricky spots and a new dead-end in the cardboard box hamster maze. At this point, there was no real entry to get to the endpoint of this maze for Bear the hamster.

With the visual blueprint on the top of the cardboard box hamster maze, we started to replicate his drawing into a real-life hamster maze.

I wanted to add some additional features to two locations in the cardboard box hamster maze to trick our Bear the hamster even further. The youngest son approved and so I made two “paper curtains”. One was placed here at a maze opening and the other was placed near the end marker right before the place we’d set his treat.

We worked together to make sure that we were happy with our path options and the replication of the youngest boy’s visual blueprint and then waited until later in the day to let Bear the hamster try his cardboard box hamster maze.

At first, we weren’t sure if Bear would make it past that first tunnel. He walked back and forth a few times before he finally noticed the opening to go into another part of his cardboard box hamster maze.

After 4 and a half minutes Bear the hamster happily completed the cardboard box hamster maze and was rewarded with his favorite treat at the end of the cardboard box hamster maze.

This was such a fun project to do for some mother/son time and I hope that we can continue to let Bear enjoy his cardboard box hamster maze, as well as make another cardboard box hamster maze someday to test our maze making skills.

Tips for Making a Hamster Maze

We have a few tips to help you along with your cardboard box hamster maze creation:

• Make sure the walls are tall enough so that the hamster doesn’t go over the top of them. One of our middle wall sections is shorter, and Bear almost climbed right over it.
• Always supervise your hamster when having them play inside a cardboard box hamster maze. They could get loose, eat a hole in the cardboard, or get hurt if left unattended.
• Place a treat at the end so that your hamster will sniff out their treat, this helps encourage your hamster to want to complete the maze. Bear the hamster loves these hamster crunchy bite treats.
• Do not wake your hamster up too far off his regular sleep schedule, as he will be cranky and unlikely to enjoy his cardboard box hamster maze adventures.
• Make sure your hamster goes pee and/or poop in his cage when he wakes up, so that you don’t have hamster pee and/or poop all over your cardboard box hamster maze.

Watch Bear the Hamster Complete The Maze

I hope that you enjoyed this how to make a cardboard box hamster maze story and tutorial. My 11-year-old son and I had so much fun creating this maze together as a way to spend some quality time together away from the TV and computer screens.