Make Learning Letter Sounds Fun By Using Home-made Letter Jars
Posted Jan 31, 10 -Filed Under children's activities (recycled materials), crafts (recycled materials), home school, reuse containers, ice cream, reuse bottles, plastic, reuse glass bottles/ jars, reuse toys, small junk | 1 Comment
Using letter jars will help children with early reading skills. It’s easy to make and fun to play. Perfect for home-school-ers / or preschoolers.
Ideas for objects beginning with the letters A, B, C, D, E, and F.
Ideas for objects beginning with the letters G, H, I, J, and K.
Ideas for objects beginning with the letters L, M, N, and O.
Ideas for objects beginning with the letters P, Q, R, and S.
Add a picture of your child. They love to be included.
Ideas for objects beginning with the letters T, U, V, W, X, Y, and Z.
Introduce one jar at a time: naming the objects and pointing out the beginning sound. Explain that all the objects that start with that sounds should go together in a jar. Some of the sounds will be easy for them to learn, others more difficult. Some of the letters conveniently say their sound: like D. Some letters are harder like G because they don’t say their sound.
When he or she seems to be able to name the objects, let children test themselves by getting out two jars at a time and mixing the objects. Then they have to sort them back out. If two jars is too easy, use three.
More advanced activities:
Some letters can make more than one sound so you can use separate jars for these if you like. Also, it can be very helpful to have a F jar and a Ph jar. It’s also helpful to have a jar for wh, sh, ch, th and other common combination sounds. Some children learn better using this kind of hands-on game.
My Children loved these jars. They would ask to use them. The little nick-knacks are so interesting.
Hot to:
Find baby food jars or plastic containers from your recycle bin. Label each container with a letter or letter combination.
Fill the containers with whatever you can find. Hunt for little things such as might be in a Piñata, given in a party favor bag, or found at the bottom of a toy box. If you have kids, chances are, you have junk toys.
*Please be aware that I’m not suggesting that you should use these with children that still put things in their mouth.
Convert a Quad Chair Carrying Sack Into A Fun Doll Sleeping Bag
Posted Jan 26, 10 -Filed Under crafts (recycled materials), reuse blankets: old or damaged, sewing, use for fabric scraps | Leave a Comment
I had a quad chair bag that I wanted to get rid of but I don’t like to just throw things away. As I was looking it over I thought of the sleeping bag idea. It turned out to be the perfect size for my daughter’s 18inch dolls.
Here is a quad chair carrying sack before being transformed into a cozy doll sleeping bag.
How to:
To Make the sleeping bag shell
1. You will notice that the chair carrying sack has a shoulder strap. Keep this strap attached at the top but cut it off near the bottom. I left the strap attached to the sleeping bag and used it as a feature of the finished sleeping bag.
2. Next measure 22.5 inches from the top. Cut a straight line across the bag. You are cutting the bottom of the sack off; save it for making the sleeping bag stuff sack.
3. Turn inside out and stitch along the bottom edge. Use a half inch seam allowance.
4. Turn right side out.
To make the sleeping bag lining and the padding layer
5. Cut a soft piece of fabric (for the lining) and a piece of on old blanket (for the padding). The pieces should measure 23 x 22 inches.
6. Put the lining on top of the blanket piece and fold in half. Folded size= 23 x 11 inches. Also, make sure the lining’s pretty side is facing inside. In other words, if you were to open the sleeping bag and look in, you should see the good side of the lining.
My daughter did all the sewing and I did the design work.
7. Sew along two sides; the long side and the bottom. Use a 5/8 inch seam allowance.
8. Slip the lining into the shell. Make sure the seam edge is on the seam side of the shell. You will need to un-sew the bit where the slit is in the shell. See picture.
9. Fold under raw edge and pin in place.
10. Hand or machine sew the lining to the shell all along the edge. Hand sewing a whip stitch is easier then machine sewing if you used a thick blanket for padding.
To make the stuff sack for the doll sleeping bag:
1. Use the bottom piece of your chair carrying sack. Only the bottom 10 inches are needed so cut off the extra.
2. Fold over the top edge about two inches and sew creating a channel about 3/8th of a inch wide. Leave a one inch gap in your stitch line as seen in picture B.
3. Find an old shoelace or cord. Using an awl or even a sharp pencil, poke two holes for the drawstring (shoelace or cord) to come out. It works best if you poke the hole from the back. The arrow in picture A indicates putting the awl up under there.
4. Attach a large safety pin onto one end of your shoe lace. Go under the flap in picture A and like a caterpillar, inch the safety pin all the way around and back out. Remove the safety pin.
5. Stick the ends of the shoe lace through the holes you made. One should come out each hole. Tie the ends of the shoe lace together. Pull the ends of the string to cinch the bag closed.
This sleeping bag fits American Girl dolls. I have no affiliation with American Girl.
Go Ahead And Make Your Own Ice Rink: It is Easy!
Posted Jan 14, 10 -Filed Under children's activities (recycled materials), reuse wood/ lumber, seasonal: winter | 2 Comments
Enjoy the convenience of an ice rink in your own yard!
Learn to ice skate!
I made this ice rink thanks to a rather cold spell in our area. If it’s going to be cold, we like to make the best of it!
Invite friends! I’ve collected a stash of assorted sized second- hand ice skates, knee pads, elbow pads, and helmets for my kids and their friends to use.
I wanted our rink to be small enough to be easy to set up and take down and I needed it to be made with materials I already had.
Materials:
Salvaged 2 x 4’s, enough to go around the perimeter
Plastic (I had leftover plastic used as a moisture barrier under my house.)
Bricks or logs; used to hold the walls in place.
How to:
Find a very flat area on your property. Lay out your 2 x 4’s to make a rectangle. Size the rectangle so that it fits your plastic. Remember that the plastic needs to go up and over the 2 x 4’s. I didn’t stake the sides or even use hardware to attach the boards to each other. I just lined the boards up end to end. Then I placed the plastic over; pulling it very flat. Next I placed other scrap pieces of 2 x 4’s where ever there was a point where two boards were meeting up. I used logs to secure in place. All that was left was to add water and nature did the rest. When the weather warms up again, gather the boards and folded up the plastic and store for future fun.
If you are looking to make a big ice rink: I found this site recently and thought it had a lot of good tips.