DIY Pushpin Board

Pushpins are great for little hands to work on and develop their pincer grip. A good amount of pressure is required to push a pin down onto a board and the more the little hands practice this, the better for them. Its a fun pre-writing activity to keep minis entertained.

I wanted to try a few activities that needed a pegboard and a geoboard. We don't have both, so I DIYed a Pushpin Board, that now serves as both! I mounted it on a little box for ease of use and am very pleased with the results! 

This is definitely going down as one of my favorite and most productive DIYs. So much learning is a single toy! This is a long post with tonnes of pictures, but definitely worth scrolling through if you are a DIY fan like me who has a little one at home, who you want to keep busy creatively :)

Here are a few activity sheets for our pushpin board. These are great for developing pincer grip and fine motor skills.

• Colour Match - poke the pins on the coloured dots based on colour.

Colour Match

• Number Sequencing - wrap rubber band around the pushpins (0-1,1-2,2-3...etc) in order of numbers.

Number Sequencing

• Letter, Shape and Pattern Tracing - poke pins along the outlines.

Pattern Tracing

Letter Tracing

• Sticker Match - wrap rubber band around the pushpins of similar stickers.

Sticker Match

• Count and Match - wrap rubber band around pushpins of pictures with their corresponding number. 

Count and Match

• The Mini came up with a new activity as well... Random pattern making the pushpin and rubber bands.

DIY Car Wash

Here is another super simple DIY toy that I made using an empty cardboard box - A Car Wash! With the level of obsession my little boy has for vehicles, I knew this one is going to be a super hit with him and it definitely is! :) 

This little handmade toy is often played with love, by the little one for hours and it is a joy to see him lost in his little world of pretend play. The joy of DIY toys is unparallelled! It gives me such a sense of satisfaction when I am able to make something for my son to play with, using not much but scraps and simple stationery. I am thankful for my constant urge to create and for my passion for DIYing.

If you do have a little vehicle lover at home, and an empty cardboard box lying around, do yourself a favour and make a Car Wash right away! Hours of play for the little one and some me-time for you guaranteed :)

DIY Fuel Pump | Play Fuel Pump

I love a good cardboard box DIY! It makes me so happy to convert an unused, old cardboard box that is just lying around, into something fun and pretty! This is one of my favourite cardboard box DIYs, if I am to choose one from the ones I have made so far.

The little fellow has a big collection of toy vehicles of all sizes - tiny, medium and big! He loves each one and engages in a lot of self play with these vehicles, at least for a few minutes every day. 

He have different props and accessories to pair up with the different sets of vehicles. The tiniest set of vehicles are best played in our sensory rice bin. The medium sized ones are used to play along with play dough. I try to encourage him to keep them separate as much as possible, to avoid messing them up too much and also to up the fun factor! A sticky wheel after a play dough play session is not going to be fun in a rice bin!

So, for the big vehicles, he didn't have any particular prop to pair up as such. He would just run them over cushions pretending it to be speed breakers. Since I had two boxed that seemed just perfect to make a big enough fuel pump to suit the big vehicles, I decided to make it as a play prop for them.

Honestly I am not sure who had more fun - me making the cute little pump or he playing with it! It was just super fun to put this together. I had planned on using the cap of his spray bottle for this DIY, but when I found a store that sells only the spray bottle cap, I was super delighted! The pump turned out way better than I had expected and it is still as good as new, after a month of play.

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 :)

Guess the Letter - a Touch and Feel Game

I have been wanting to try a touch and feel activity with the Mini for a while now. An activity mainly focusing on his sense of touch. So, I had planned this particular game as a blindfold game initially, but turns out the little fellow is afraid of the dark and simply refused to wear the blindfold! 

Well...so, I had to DIY an empty cardboard box as plan B!

I cut out openings on the sides of the box and placed a bowl full of wooden letters inside. I made sure the Mini couldn't see the letters. He had to put his hands inside the box through the side cutouts and just touch each letter, feel it and try to guess without peeping! 

It took him a few attempts to understand the game and then he was on a roll! Honestly, it amazed me that he was able to do this activity way better than I had imagined. I did not think at 3 he would be able to get the concept and actually get going with the guessing. But he did! I am proud of my little guy and am glad I did try this with him.

The game was a huge hit with him, that he went on and on... Here he goes! :)

Popsicle Sticks - Upper and Lower Case Letters Match

The first activity that we did around upper and lower case identification was the one with building blocks. It was a fun little DIY that the Mini loved and I give that activity credit for actually helping him identify most of the lower case letters. 

So, ever since then I wanted to do a few more activities around the different cases and finally got around setting this one up. It is a simple DIY and can be easily made with items available around the house. I love cardboard box DIYs and this is one of the easiest of them all!

You can use simple plain coloured popsicle sticks for this, but I had fancy coloured ones and I loved the pop of colour they brought in to the set up as a good contrast to the brown of the cardboard box. So, its not a must that you use coloured popsicle sticks here, but if you like pretty things like me... try to get them! :D They should be available in most stationery supply stores.

This activity not only helps in upper and lower case letter identification and association, it also helps work on the fine motor skills of those little hands pushing the popsicle sticks through the slots on the cardboard. Mini had a lot of fun doing this over and over and after almost 6 months, he still enjoys playing with this DIY :)