Quick Traffic Light for your Little Driver

M was driving his little spiderman truck around the house this morning, and occasionally he would stop with a blank look on his face, totally staring into space. I finally asked him “what are you doing? (meaning, are you OK?)”. He said, “I pushed on the brake and stopped because the light is red.” “Now it’s green again, bye Mommy!” :)

Now, it really is ok to let your kids just do their thing and not interfere, but whipping up a little traffic light for him seemed like such a simple thing and I was in the mood. So… here’s what I did. No pictures for most of it, yet once again. (Sorry!)

• Empty your close-to-empty tissue box
• Take it apart and put it back together inside-out.
• Tape it up with packaging tape.
• Use your coffee cup to draw 3 circles on red, green, and yellow construction paper.
• Tape them to the front (what used to be the inside of the bottom) of your box.
• Give it to your kid.
• Watch him drive up to it and stop. Hope he knows he can pretend the lights change. :)

Have a beautiful day! :)

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! :)