Button Board

I just made this: Isn’t it fun?!  This will be a shelf activity for M this week, but I like how it turned out so much that I’m sharing it early.  I think it will also make a great car trip activity!

I first saw the idea for a button board at Chasing Cheerios (I can’t find the exact link), and have been meaning to make one ever since.  I had a lot of ideas to make it more boyish (hers was flowers) and thought of wheels for cars and trucks.  However, I finally decided to make it easy on myself and just made shapes. 

It will be great for learning this practical life skill and will give those fine motor skills a good workout!

It took me about an hour total to put it together.  Should’ve taken pictures, but I didn’t…. anyway, here’s what I did:

• Cut a piece of corrugated cardboard to desired size and shape.
• Choose fabric from stash to cover board.
• Decide where you want to put buttons, and mark spots with an “X”.
• Sew buttons on.  This is the not-so-fun part, especially if you choose to have 15 buttons.
• Put thin layer of glue over the cardboard and smooth fabric with buttons out on top, centered with extra to overlap onto the back.  I used decoupage glue, you could use regular white glue thinned with water, or spray adhesive.
• flip the board over and wrap edges around to the back.  Secure with duct tape or more glue, or both.
• Cut several shapes of all colors and sizes from felt.
• Cut button hole slits in each shape in the center. Felt is so great for projects like this because there is no sewing involved!
• Button your shapes onto your board! 

You could make this with more room between the buttons, and then outline the shapes on the fabric around the buttons.  Your child could then match the felt shapes to the shape outlines. 

I like it this way, even though it is a little busy looking.  M can rearrange the shapes however he wants, and come up with a new design each time.  It’s great for a shape and color review tool too!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Build-a-Letter Templates

A week ago, in this post, I mentioned the letter templates and foam shapes I created for M to use in “building” letters.  There are a couple of books out there that do this same thing, but you know me – I won’t pay for something I can make myself. :) 

There has been a small amount of interest in these, and I have decided to post my templates for anyone who might want to do this too.  Click on this image:
A couple of things you should know…

1. The first two pages of the file have the shape templates that you will need to cut out and trace onto craft foam.  The rest of the pages show how to put them together for each letter.
2. I’ve made notes on the file telling how many of each shape you will need to cut from foam in order to build any letter.  However, if you want enough foam shapes to put all of the letters together at the same time, you will have to cut several more.  We do one letter at a time, then pick another letter and re-use the shapes we need.  (Sure hope that makes sense!)
3. Because the template pieces will need to overlap a little to make many of the letters, some of the lines are not showing up on the file.  For example the B: I could not figure out a way to get them all to show, so part of the lines are missing.  It was the middle of the night when I created this and I finally gave up trying!  I suggest you go over your sheets with a marker and fill in the missing parts so your child will have an easier time *seeing* how to build the letters.  This was only a problem because there was extra space around the templates in the file.  Obviously, it won’t be a problem when you are using the actual foam pieces.

If you use these and blog about them, please link back here!

Only uppercase letters are included in this, but I hope to make a set for lowercase letters sometime soon!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Our Flannel Board – part 3

Well, finally I am getting around to almost finishing up this little flannel board series!  {Part 4 will be the last part – a short one (I promise!) about games and making fun scenes for creative play time.}

Now that M is 3 years old, I’ve noticed he is much more responsive to stories told with the flannel board than he was at a younger age.  In fact, he loves it and will often re-tell a new story himself several times throughout the day and then again when Daddy comes home.  It is so much fun to see!

We don’t have a lot of felt story sets, but I have ideas for several.  Just have to find the time – you know how that goes! ;)

Here are the story sets we currently have (and links to the source, where appropriate):

• Brown Bear, Brown Bear:As you can imagine, this one is popular!  We don’t own the book but we’ve checked it out from the library enough times to have it memorized.  M loves doing this one by himself – the rhythm of the story (more like a chant), is fun in and of itself!  Be sure to check out the link above – Making Learning Fun has a ton of great ideas for this story, not just the felt set!

 

• The story of the first Thanksgiving:This set is really just a grouping of clip art from kizclub.  I used it last Thanksgiving to introduce M to some new words (it was so cute to hear him say “cornucopia”!), and this year I’ll use it to tell a simple story of the first Thanksgiving.

 

• This set is all about feelings:M had a small board book (Sesame Street’s Monster Faces) about feelings and it was the best one I found that labeled feelings in a simple way.  There was absolutely no copyright information anywhere in the book, and since Sesame Street characters are pretty easy to obtain, I had no qualms about just photocopying the pages and attaching them to felt.  These came in very handy when M was in that whiny stage around 14 months or so and we were trying to give him the words to use to describe his emotions.  I’m including this one to give you some ideas for making your own felt sets!

 

• The Little Red Hen (perfect for autumn / harvest time!):

 

• The Nativity: This is a fabulous set for telling the story of Christmas!  Last year M was not that enthralled with seeing the story on the flannel board, but he enjoyed playing with the figures!  This year I know we’ll get a lot of use out of this one, and I’m excited!

 

• Another Bible story – Jesus and the Children:This is one I simply threw together to go with the Bible story… I used clip art I found online and some online coloring pages too.  I’m sorry I don’t have the links to any of them.  I’m including it because even though it’s not as nice-looking as some of the sets, it is one of M’s favorites.  He loves telling this story and he really does not care that the size of the disciples is totally out of proportion to Jesus, or any of the other minor details that bothered me about it when I made it.

This brings me to a related topic that I would like to mention… 

Flannel board stories are fabulous especially for telling Bible stories.  They help the story come alive for the child.  I’ve really seen this with M.  Whenever we have a felt set to go along with a Bible story (or any kind of visual aid like story sequencing cards) I’ve noticed he comprehends and just enjoys the story so much more!  He also goes back and reviews the story over and over again if the pieces are left out for him. 

I am very disappointed that there are not more free resources online for Bible story felt sets.  I’ve found a few, which I’ll link to at the end of this post, and if you know of any, I’d love to hear about them in the comments!

I am going to enlist my husband’s help for making future felt sets for Bible stories – he is not an artist, but he does have quite a bit of talent when it comes to drawing – and I hope to make them downloadable here for any of you that might want to use them too!  This will be a work in progress, but if there are any specific Bible stories you’d like to see, I’d love to know about it!  Please feel free to comment or email me!

LINKS TO RESOURCES I’VE COME ACROSS:

• Sparklebox has several Bible story resources on this page.  These include some sets that can be used for storyboards or flannel boards, as well as some cards that are great for story sequencing
• Making Friends has several paper doll-style printables here that could be adapted for flannel boards.  They also have some great Bible story craft ideas!
• Browse through Christian Preschool Printables for a few great felt set and story aid ideas.
• Danielle’s Place is not the easiest site to navigate, but if you have time, it’s well worth looking through – she has quite a few free printables that would work for felt sets.
• Look through DLTK’s Bible section for crafts, coloring pages that can be made into felt sets, and other ideas.

Any others you know of?  Share them in the comments!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Stamping Game for Counting and Pre-reading Skills

Have you seen the oh-so-cute pencil-top stampers in the dollar spot at Target lately?!?  We love stamps so I grabbed some of the monster kind.  We call them “sillies” here, because M is not at all comfortable with the idea of monsters.  ;)

I made a quick and simple game with these to go on our activity shelves.  All you need is a couple of stamps (or you could use buttons or some other manipulative as markers), a number die (we made ours from this template), and a simple grid with 20 spaces.

{I created a grid game a while back to go with a Bible story lesson, and the large grid for that game can be printed from here.  I also made a smaller grid – 2 to a page – and that can be printed from here, then cut.  You could simply draw some on some scratch paper also.}

To play, take turns rolling the die, then stamping that number of squares on your grid.  The first to fill their grid is the winner.  Fill your grid going from left to right, and top to bottom.  This helps develop the habit needed for eventual reading. 

M is having a lot of fun playing this – it’s such a simple way to make counting fun and he has no idea he’s learning pre-reading skills too.

This morning while I was lying in bed being lazy, I heard M begging Daddy to play this game with him.  So cute!  And, again, a quick lesson for me that the things which are simple and quick for me to put together are always more popular with him than the things I spend hours on.  Kids! :)

Here’s a shot of the used grids from yesterday afternoon.  I’m not kidding – M loves this game!
Have a beautiful day! :)

P.S. Happy Birthday, Honey!!  I love you! (my hubs :) )

Game Book

In an effort to help M develop some pre-writing skills (since he is forever wanting to “draw letters” but gets frustrated when he can’t), I made him this little game book.  It’s full of mazes mostly right now, and a couple of dot-to-dots.  Dot-to-dot is a new idea for him, but I think he’ll catch on quickly. 

I simply printed a few pages I found online, put them into page protectors, and popped them into a 3-ring binder.  He can use his window markers on the page protectors, then wipe them off and do them again. 

Eventually I’ll add shape tracing pages, maybe some “draw a line from the dog to his doghouse” type of worksheets (do you know what I’m talking about??), and even some large letter patterns to follow.

This was super-easy and super-fast to put together. 

Here are some of the links I found for good game pages to print.  I copied some of the smaller mazes into my photo-editing program, enlarged them, and then printed them out.

• Simple dot-to-dot pages
• Simple mazes (.pdf file)
• More simple mazes
• Mazes ( a tiny bit more difficult)
• Website full of game links, rated by difficulty

 

I hope you enjoy this idea!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Autumn Tic Tac Toe

I’ve been doing a lot of online searching, printing, cutting and laminating the last few weeks, getting ready for autumn activities with M.  Fall is my very, very favorite season (like the new look of the blog?) and we are going to be having a lot of fun learning over the coming weeks.

I ran across a great online Autumn Tic Tac Toe game at DLTK, and fell in love with the cute graphics of the pumpkin and leaf.  I wanted to turn it into a hands-on game to play with M, and  I was graciously given permission to publish it on here for you to download and print too!  (Thank you to Darren at DLTK!) It’s very simple, but I think it appeals to small children.

The download for the printable game is here.  The online game, for those of you whose children are already using the computer, is here.

Enjoy!  And have a beautiful first day of fall! :)

Our Flannel Board – part 2

(Part 1 of this series is here)

Before I get started, I want to correct a mistake in last week’s flannel board post. I wasn’t sure I had the correct measurements of the foam core board I used to make our flannel board, and I was too lazy at the time to go measure the silly thing. I have done so since then and it is approximately 20” by 30”. It seems to be the perfect size, and the foam core board works wonderfully so far (close to 3 years now)!

I just love making felt sets for M to use with our flannel board. You can find many templates online, draw your own, print out pictures to use, or even clip images from magazines and back them with felt! I’ve done this to create puzzles for M to put together on the flannel board. And, anything you do for the flannel board can be done for a magnet board too! It’s fun to switch things up a little bit sometimes and have some magnet sets that you use on a cookie sheet!

M played with the (very few) felt sets we had when he was small, then lost interest for a time being. I would say he regained interest (and boy, it was a LOT of interest) when he was about 2 1/2 years old. At this stage, many children are intrigued by the way you can *see* a story unfold by using the flannel board.
They also love poems and songs that have manipulatives (the felt pieces) that they can use to bring the songs to life. Poems and songs are a big hit here, in part because they are short and easy to memorize, so M can “do” the flannel board by himself.

And I love the counting poems we have! It’s great to see M learning to count and even learning to subtract or add as pieces are added to the board or taken off.

Pictured below are our poem and song felt sets. When appropriate, I’ve linked the title to the site where I found the templates. You can find more templates and ideas at these sites too, so be sure to click over!

5 Green and Speckled Frogs:

5 Little Seashells:
There’s no link for this one because it was a freebie as part of a membership at The Mailbox.com (which I no longer have). However, the shells and wave are super-easy to make and here’s a link to a poem that goes with them. It’s not the exact same poem we use, but it is cute!

5 Little Pumpkins:(um, yes, there are only four pumpkins here and no gate. This one still needs a few finishing touches, but the pumpkins are just so pretty, aren’t they?)

 

5 Little Ducks:


10 in the Bed (This one was made by printing the pieces, laminating them, attaching sandpaper to the back of the bed, and putting velcro pieces on the pillows and the backs of the bears):


Old MacDonald Had a Farm (also made by printing and laminating!):

There’s a Little White Duck:

Polka-dot numbers 0 – 20 :
We use this for number recognition and number sequence, playing a kind of Brown Bear, Brown Bear game – We’ll put #1 up and say “number one, number one, what do you see?” “I see a number two looking at me”, etc. M has to find the correct number and put it on the flannel board. Often, I will put them out on the floor pretty much in sequence to make it easier for him. Occasionally we mix them up a little bit. Sometimes I have him recite the poem and see if he can get the numbers in order. Right now we only use 0-10, as that seems to be enough for him to deal with at one time.

2 Little Apples: I made this one myself – simply cut a trunk and tree top out of brown and green felt. Make two apples with faces (if you wish) and you’re done. Here’s the poem that goes with this one in case you are unfamiliar with it:

Way up high in the apple tree,
I saw two little apples looking at me.
I shook that tree as hard as I could,
Down came the apples,
and mmmm, mmmm, were they good!

When M was a tiny baby I would recite this poem for him like this:

Way up high in the apple tree,
I saw a little baby looking at me!
I shook that tree as hard as I could (gently, gently “shake” baby, without really shaking him at all),
Down came the baby,
and mmmm, mmmm, was he good! (eat him up, but don’t really eat him up, ha ha).

He always giggled with that one! :)

Next week (hopefully) part 3 – telling stories with the flannel board and how I (try to) keep them organized.

Have a beautiful day! :)

Our Flannel Board – part 1

 

M just LOVES our flannel board.  I’m sure you already know this, because I’ve said it on this blog about 20 times already. ;) 

The flannel board has become such a big part of our day lately - “school” time and just playtime too – that I want to share a few things about it – including how I made our board, the different ways I make the felt sets, which felt sets we have, and how we use them.

Since we have about 20 different felt sets, with lots of ideas for more, this is going to have to be a series of posts.  I hope it gives you some great ideas!

To make our flannel board, I used a large piece of foam core board from Michael’s (2’ x 3’, I think).  Some people choose to use a heavier material such as plywood, but I wanted ours to be lightweight and easy to transport since we move it around the house, or sometimes put it away.  M was very small when I first made our flannel board and I didn’t want him to get hit in the head with something heavy, should he pull it over on him (our board is not attached to the wall in any way, it just leans up against it).

I bought 1/2 yard of blue flannel and attached it to the foam core board.  To cover the board, simply pretend you are wrapping a present, then secure the fabric to the back of the board with glue or duct tape.  I used white duct tape and it has held up fine for over 2 years now.  It is not very *pretty* on the back, but we never see that side and easy means more to me than pretty does for something like this!

I also found an 8” x 10” piece of corrugated cardboard, and used some leftover flannel to make a smaller version that we take with us on car trips:

The first felt set I made for M was a group of simple shapes in different sizes.  He was less than 1 year old and had fun simply manipulating them, sticking them in his mouth (bleck!), and trying to make them stick to the flannel board.  We had them out all the time and made fun geometric designs with them: I repeated the names of the shapes for him, and sometimes the colors, over and over while he picked them up and did whatever he wanted with them.  He knew the names of all the shapes pictured within a few weeks.  Sometimes we used them to talk about soft versus hard.

The next set pictured is what I refer to as our “miscellaneous set” – it’s a little bit of everything.  I found many of the templates in Flannel Board Stories for Infants and Toddlers, by Ann Carlson, which I picked up at our local library.  Some of the printed pictures were found on various pages of the DLTK-kids.com site.

These were just for fun since M was still so little, and are things that M found interesting – a car, an airplane, a school bus, a semi-trailer, a little boy with clothes you can change, and a couple of puppies.

This is a good point to discuss the various ways of making felt sets.  Most of these were simply made by drawing or tracing with felt tip pens right onto the felt pieces, then cutting them out. You can use all colors of felt-tip markers, but make sure they are permanent markers, so the colors don’t bleed if they should happen to get wet.

To make the puppies and similar picture-pieces, I printed the pictures onto regular paper and cut them out.  I then put a thin layer of white glue on the entire back of the picture and placed them on a piece of felt.  A heavy book on top made sure they stayed flat as the glue dried; once it was completely dry, I cut it out along the edge of the picture.  This is one of my favorite methods – it’s just so easy to do, and the felt pieces hold up very well.

If you find pictures online that you would like to use, another great way to make them is to print them out, laminate them, and hot glue a piece of sandpaper to the back.  Sometimes the rough part of velcro works too, but I have had better luck with sandpaper; and the rougher the better.  This is easy to do and the pieces stay in great shape, but they are not quite as much fun for little fingers to play with as felt is.

{I sometimes copy a black and white picture into my computer’s “paint” program to color it before printing it out to use this way.  Of course, you could also color them with markers or crayons before laminating them.}

Fabric stabilizer sheets also work for use on the flannel board.  These color well with colored pencils or crayons – simply draw, color, and cut out the piece you want.  The stabilizer is rough enough to stick on the flannel board by itself.

In the next flannel board post I’ll share some of our other sets, and how I keep them organized, as well as the different things we do with them!

Have a beautiful day! :)

How to Make a Great Sticker Book

I've made a smaller version of this (using a small photo album - the kind grandmas carry in their purses :) ) for M to take on car trips and it's been great. He loved this one even more!

You will need: 3-ring binder, peices of construction paper, patterned scrapbook paper, pictures from magazines or calendars, page protectors (not shown, sorry!):

Make a "title page" and insert it into the binder's cover. Or, if you don't have a binder with a clear pocket on the front, simply use permament markers to create a title:

Simply use a variety of papers and pictures and put them in sheet protectors. If you have some small pictures, use double-stick tape to stick them onto colored paper and then into the page protector. I used two pictures/papers for each page protector - they slide in a lot more easily if it's doubled, and you also get a different picture on each side. Next, stick the pages into your binder, and a few sheets of stickers into the front pocket. These pictures were taken after a little play because M insisted on having it right away:

Here's a picture of the inside pocket:

It really looked much neater before he got his hands on it, but I didn't straighten it up before taking pictures because I wanted you to see how much he really loved it. He played with it for a long time and carried it around with him for days. The stickers (mostly) peel right off of the page protectors so they can be used again and again.

Obviously M didn't really care about the pictures, the fun for him was simply putting the stickers on and off. But for an older child there's a lot they can do with creating sticker scenes with the various backgrounds.

A tip for young children who have a hard time getting the stickers off by themselves: remove the sticky part on the sticker page that goes around the stickers and then show them how to bend the paper and peel off a sticker. It makes it sooo much easier for them!

This was super simple to make, and actually a lot of fun for me too! And it's keeping him entertained, which is such a great thing for all of us!

Enjoy! And have a beautiful day! :)

Easy Way to Make Puzzles

When M was old enough to do basic, very easy, puzzles, I started trying to make them myself. I tried every suggestion I could find online - glue pictures to foam, to cereal boxes, foam core board, laminate them... and on and on and on.

Well, after a lot of experimenting I came up with this way and have been happily making these great, easy little puzzles ever since. I'm sure others make puzzles this way too, but I haven't seen it online. It literally takes about 5 minutes to do the main part. You do have to wait a while for the drying and flattening, but if you are in that much of a hurry why are you making your own puzzles??! ;)

You will need:

• Some newsprint, newspaper, or scrap paper to cover your work surface.
• Some decoupage glue.
• A foam paintbrush.
• Your picture. This can be clipart, a photo, a magazine picture, etc. The one shown here is from an online free coloring page that I copied into my paint program and colored, then printed. *If you are printing a picture out, it MUST be printed on glossy photo paper.* Anything else will smear with the glue.
• Some thin but sturdy cardboard from a food or cereal box - this one is from a box of crackers.

Paint a coat of glue onto the cardboard, stick the picture on, and paint a coat of glue over it. Done. :) Well, with the hard part anyway. If you are doing a small 4 x 6 like this one it will take you about 2 minutes, including set up. Sooo easy!

Next, put it somewhere to dry. I usually wait overnight, but you don't necessarily have to. Just wait till the glue is pretty much dry.

If it has bent a little as the glue dried, you can cover it with wax paper and set a heavy book on it for a day to flatten it back out.

Once it is lying flat like you want it, you can cut the excess cardboard off, draw your puzzle pieces on the back and cut them out:

And voila - a puzzle! I've made a lot of these, and they always turn out great.

Here's the first one I made (a little worse for wear), over 2 years ago. It is 8 1/2" x 11" and cut into 4 large pieces. I put magnets on the back and Tigger has been our fridge puzzle ever since. Every kid that comes into our house has to play with this - it's been a big hit!

Want a frame for your puzzle? For very small children, it's nice to have something they can set the pieces into. Make your puzzles with the thin cardboard described above, and use thicker corrugated cardboard for a frame. For example, if you are creating an 8x10 puzzle, cut an 8x10 rectangle out of a piece of corrugated cardboard. You may need to trim a tiny bit off of this to allow a little space for manipulation of the puzzle pieces. Then glue your frame to another piece of cardboard. The nice thing about this is if you are creating several puzzles the same size, you can use one frame for all of them.

Have some fun making puzzles. And have a beautiful day! :)

Tools for Tots - Weather Chart!

Update: I found some free weather clip art, added it to the chart the I made, and created a .pdf file that you can download here to make your own weather chart!



We've been learning about the different seasons a lot in the past few months. It naturally leads to talking about weather.

I found these little weather cards at Science A to Z under the weather unit link:
If you are interested in making these, they do have a free sample that you can sign up for. Otherwise they cost a little bit.

I simply laminated all the pieces and added magnets to the back of the small cards. We keep the chart taped to the fridge, and check to see what it looks like outside, then M picks the correct magnet to put on the chart. Very simple, easy to understand, and quick! And it makes him feel so proud! I'm not sure why exactly, but the why doesn't matter, does it? ;) (The masking tape is not the prettiest touch, I know. I don't know why I don't *see* these things until the picture is already taken.)
Enjoy! And have a beautiful (sunny!) day!