Traveling With Kiddos: Popsicle Stick Puzzles

Two days in a row?? There is a pretty decent chance that the world may be coming to an end, but hopefully it’s just a rush of motivation on my part.

I’m back (for the second day in a row—didn’t know if you caught that) to share another little craft idea that I stole from someone and made my own. That’s what Pinterest is for, right?!

 

 

This one wasn’t quite as quick as the Matching Tubes, but it’s one of those things you can do while you’re watching Charlotte’s Web with the kiddos. It gets harder toward the end of the movie and Charlotte dies because everything gets blurry for some reason. But I digress.

For this I had almost everything on hand already and I just printed out the pictures onto cardstock. The only thing I had to buy was the rubber cement, and I’ve been meaning to pick some up for a while anyway.

 

 

Super simple: just find pictures your little munsters will like and print them out onto cardstock. Regular printer paper would probably work too but I make no guarantees. From there I just cut them out and flipped them over so they were right-side down on my TV tray high-tech crafting surface. I brushed the rubber cement on just a little at a time since it tends to dry really fast and just lined up popsicle sticks along the back. Once I had the back of the picture glued and sticked (?), I added a little weight to make sure the sticks…stuck. It sounds like I’m not making sense, but I totally am.

 

 

Once your glue is dry, just take your handy dandy box cutter and slice those sticks apart. I was initially worried that the puzzle might be too hard since I only had the really narrow popsicle sticks, but I gave it the good ol’ college try and was able to put them together with minimal tears. Just to be safe though, I printed out a reference picture for the kids so they know what they're building.

 

 

Wouldn’t it be so cool if I could keep up this momentum and fill you in on a bunch of little projects? Yeah, I don’t think it’s going to happen either. A girl can dream : ) Have fun!

Traveling With Kiddos: Easy Matching Tubes

I know I’ve been gone for a while, but I’m exercising my pop-in rights to share with you a mini project for the munsters.

We’re taking a trip this next week to visit family in Indiana, and rather than play DVDs for the kids the entire 9-10 hour trip I’m trying to find some fun things for them to do in the car. This site has TONS of ideas for fun car activities for kiddos so I’m stealing her ideas. : )

 

 

The one idea of hers that I’m for sure doing is this one. Basically it’s a matching game combined with coercing challenging them to use those fine motor skills. And since all my littles are at different stages in their understanding/abilities, I thought I’d share the three different versions I came up with. Oh, you’re welcome. Leave tips on the table.

 

 

Here is Eden’s Matching Tube. (On her site she calls them Matching Poles but I immediately thought of strippers. Tubes it is!) Since she’s reading and recognizing words, she gets word matching stickers to match with the words on her pole tube.

 

 

Sissy gets numbers on hers. I thought about doing dots on the stickers and having her match them up with the numerals on the tube, but I’m not sure she knows all of her numbers that well and I’d rather she have fun than get frustrated.

 

 

For Judah, I just put a sheet of dots on the tube and attached one sheet. I honestly don’t know if he’s going to be interested or able to do it, but this way he at least has all the same tools as his sisters so he won’t feel like he’s missing out. (P.S. The stickers that I got at the dollar section of Target do not stick to the tubes well at all. If you have extra time you could glue them or maybe pricier stickers would work better. No idea)

 

 

And there you have it. Each one took me no more than 90 seconds, and I may end up making each of the girls another Matching Tube before we leave on Monday. I guess it really depends on how many trips to the loo we take. Isn’t that such a fancy word? : ) Hope you’re enjoying the beginning of your summer!