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! :)

Tot School

Matthew is 34 months old

*I have to apologize again this week for our lack of modesty. No, M doesn't ALWAYS wear just underwear and a t-shirt. I do make him dress to go out or to the store. But at home inside this is what he wants, and I'm just not prepared to make a big deal out of it. *

Every day this week M has asked to "play school". He is just really into it lately. I know a big part of it is getting to spend one on one time with me... I have a hard time balancing all the things that need to be done in a day and I'm thankful for Tot School because it helps me schedule in time just for M. It's good for both of us!

This week we hunted for items for our nature basket. We have a tiny green apple that fell into our yard from the neighbor's tree, a bunch of oak leaves with tiny acorns in the middle, a rock that he dug up, a little mushroom, and a piece of bark:

We did a lot of drawing with sidewalk chalk. His drawing has really taken off in the last couple of weeks - it actually looks like what he says it is. This is so amazing to me. Here he drew a football and a fire engine:

I'm sorry I just can't remember whose blog I saw this on, but it was not my original idea - I made an old potato salad bucket into a piggy for him and he loves feeding it his pretend food. He makes all the appropriate piggy noises too. It's pretty funny to listen to. :)

We got the feltboard out after putting it away a month or two ago and then completely forgetting about it. It's a good thing because it was like having a new toy. We did the "5 Green and Speckled Frogs" song and he really got into making the frogs jump into the pool and then taking them off the board. We did this over and over again.

We sorted some color cards that I printed out and laminated from here. Each card has an object on it (ex. purple flower) and I made pockets on a file folder of the different colors. We took turns picking a card and then putting it in the right pocket. I've found making things into a game like this where we take turns, or close our eyes, or something along those lines, helps him become more interested in some activities.

We did some of these ABC puzzle cards that I got from the dollar store. He wasn't into this so much so it didn't last very long. He hasn't gotten the small letters figured out yet, and something about this frustrates him.

We used tongs to put these cute erasers into an ice cube tray.

Then we sorted them into 3 piles. He wanted to use the tongs for this too.

My favorite thing was something I didn't get a picture of. We had a nice rain shower on Tuesday and he wanted to open the window and raise the screen, and we put our hands out and felt the rain and talked about it. He loved this and so did I. :)

Hope you all had a great week too! For more Tot School posts visit 1+1+1=1.

Have a beautiful day! :)