Popsicle Sticks Rainbow Puzzle

My little boy has always loved puzzles. There was a phase a few months ago, when he would pull out all his puzzles boxes one after another and sit and complete them all. His interests in puzzles has slightly dwindled since. He still sits and solves them when reminded or when they have been away for a while, but unlike earlier, it isn't a daily activity these day.

To keep it interesting and to give him more option without actually buying more puzzles, I had done made this DIY Jigsaw Puzzle using the backside of our existing jigsaw puzzle pieces. This again was much loved by the little fellow and was well used.

More recently, he has a great interest in colours. Rainbow colours attract him and he loves singing a little song related to the colours of the rainbow. When I came across this DIY puzzles idea using popsicle sticks on Instagram, I just knew my Mini would love it and got to work almost immediately.

Some jumbo popsicle sticks, colour pens and pencil is all that you need to make this vibrant looking puzzle.  The single jumbled popsicle sticks are pretty confusing to look at on the first go. So, it was a little tough for him to solve all by himself. I had to help him half way through and he would solve the second half by himself.

 I loved making it for him and he loved seeing the rainbow form as he sat working the puzzle through.

Object Hunt and Letter Sound Match - Sensory Play

The little one's fondness for letter sounds is still very fresh and so am trying to make the most of it by thinking up new activities and games related to phonics. Our first two letter sound activities were much loved by the Mini. Listing them here, in case you have missed them. 

• Letter Sounds and Object Match
• Letter Sound (of colours) Car Park 

For this letter sound activity, I brought in some sensory play as well. I collected random items from around the house (Onion for O, Fork for F, Garbage Truck for G, Road Roller for R... etc). I used our rice bin as a base, in which I hid in these random objects. The little guy had to search through the rice bin and find these items one by and one and then match them with the letters written on sheets of paper, based on the starting letter of the items.

He was able to figure out the the starting letter of most items, while need a little bit of help with some. This is a very easy to set up game for toddler just starting out with letter sounds. They not only get familiar with everyday object and their names but also learn letter sounds and eventually to spell the names of these objects.

DIY Car Parking and Ramp

Oh look what I found! This DIY car ramp is from over two years ago, one of my first craft projects that I made for my little guy. He was just about 15 months old when I made this for him and was already a little car lover :) He had a handful of little cars that he enjoys playing with. So sheets from an empty cardboard box, had decided to attempt making a little car parking and ramp for him.

Back then, I used his nap-times as a measure of time as that was all the free time I had at hand!! :D So this project costed me all of just one nap-time to make, which was about 2 hours. It was quite therapeutic and fun for me as it was after ages that I was actually sitting and painting something. I enjoyed the process. 

Of course the little muffin loved it! Oh just look at that happy face! He placed his little cars atop the ramp and pushed them down the ramp using his chubby pudgy fingers! 

DIY Mini Construction Site

My boy loves LOVES vehicles. And I LOVE DIYs !! This one is an awesome combination of both :)

I had a huge cardboard box lying around that I decided to convert into a simple construction site for the Mini. With some inspiration from Pinterest and some own ideas I made this Mini Construction Site.

First off, I taped the bottom of the cardboard box shut so that it cannot be opened from below. 

Then, I painted one side blue depict the blue sky and stuck a few cotton balls randomly to make cute little puffy clouds. Once the paint dried, added a sun on one top corner and using a black sketch pen, drew little birdies and a few buildings.

Also drew some roads and lanes on the base of the cardboard box to depict little roads for the vehicles to go on. I placed a few trays here and there and filled them with chickpeas, cotton balls, pompoms to depict various construction materials. 

Then, in came all the little construction vehicles, randomly placed across the roadways that I just drew. I also placed a few cotton balls and some chickpeas on his mini construction vehicles as well, as play prompts.

That was it! A mini construction site was ready for the little one. He happily plopped himself right inside box, at the heart of the site and began exploring the various items I had in there for him. 

Looks like the little construction engineer is on a dream break :)

Pretend Haircut

When the little one was around 2, I had got him a little kid's scissors. These are great for little hands, as they are not sharp and dangerous while are good enough to snip paper. I was excited to introduce these to him, but apparently he was not yet ready for them back then. He would just hold them but was not able to snip papers. So I kept them away and planned to reintroduce them after a few months.

As part of my work, which I do at home, I have a lot of cutting of fabric that I need to do (I make Memory Quilts!). Mini sees me at work and lately showed a lot of interest in wanting to sit with me and cut too! I was delighted and brought out his little scissors and handed him a sheet of paper. And voila! It was a hit this time and he took to it immediately!

It gave him great joy to see himself work his way around snipping paper and this kept him busy for a good time, while got to get some work done in parallel. Once he got a little fluent in basic cutting, I decided to make this craft for him - a pretend play hair cutting salon with wild haired little tissue paper roll men! 

Being a DIY enthusiast I have a whole lot of tissue paper rolls, cardboard boxes, craft paper and the like lying around to help me make up a DIY, as and when an idea strikes! So for this one, I used up a few tissue paper rolls and some basic stationery supply. It took me just all of 30 minutes or so to get these done. 

And the joy it brought to the little one was absolutely priceless! Worth every bit of the effort put in.

I introduced a few different textures for him to play around and work his cutting skills on. I used straws, crepe paper and craft paper for the hair of the tissue paper men. We have since then bought another kid's scissors which are slightly more sharper than the absolutely safe one which we used earlier. Since he is a little better with his cutting now, and since we have more textures here than only plain paper, I gave him a choice of both scissors to use as needed.

He needed a little reminder every now and then to open the scissors wide before attempting to cut and each time he did that, his little mouth too opened wide! :D Oh, it was the cutest sight!

This Mini Salon is going to remain one of my favourite DIYs to date. I loved every aspect from planning, making to presenting it to him to play and also watching him in delight and enjoying the set up! :) If you have a toddler who loves to cut, this one is for you! Do try it :)

Egg Carton Colour Match Game | Toddler Games

I love it when I get to re-purpose Mini's old toys and find newer ways to use them. That way, an old ignored toy gets a new life and garners new interest to be played with. 

In this DIY game, I recycled one of his early toddler toys. I had got him a set of lacing discs which he showed absolutely no interest in back then. Lacing never interested him and I have since then just kept away the entire set not knowing what else I could do with it.

A few months ago, I took the set out and used it for a super fun Shape Sorting Fishing Game which the Mini really took to and enjoyed. I was glad I was finally able to use the lacing discs in some way. We have since used them for simple sorting activity based on shape and colour. 

He loves colours in general and anything to do with colours! So, when I found a fine motor skills activity idea on Pinterest using egg cartons, I just knew I had to base it around colours for my little fellow. Using inputs from the post to prep up the egg carton with skewers, I added in a colour dimension and made it a colour sorting activity for him.

It took me all of 20-25 minutes to make this and kept the little fellow busy for a good amount of time. Along with the straight forward colours, I also coloured one slot in multi-colours just to get him thinking! He worked his way around sorting the coloured discs based on the colours around the skewers and took a while to figure out what went onto the multi-coloured slot :) Soon he decided random discs go onto that slot began stacking discs of different colours onto it.