quick light box

I have always liked the light table at our local children's museum. Due to several recent posts exploring light at Play At Home Mom, I have really been coveting a light table. While I would love to have one, I can't justify the cost without knowing how much use it would get. For our purposes at this point in time, I decided to make a quick test model just to see how long a light table would hold interest.

Playing with color.

What you need:

• Bin or box with a translucent lid
• Aluminum foil
• LED flashlights (regular, if that's all you have!) or holiday lights (a resourceful mom I know used these!)
• Objects that allow light through!
• marbles
• stones
• tissue paper
• magna tiles(if you have them)
• clear plastic bottle (optional) 
• x-rays

Line your box with aluminum foil. Turn on all the flashlights. Put the lid on.

What it looks like inside.

Turning the flashlights on end so they point toward the lid works well, but was too difficult to see in photos.

Voila! Two minute light table!

It's not perfect, but it definitely served its purpose. I will probably use a larger bin next time, but everything else worked well enough to do again. The tissue paper was great for making colors!

Create Homemade Tree Blocks - Natural STEM Toy

Make your own DIY Tree Blocks 

Spring is a great time to make tree blocks. The bark is easy to get off of the branches in spring, and since this is the most time consuming part otherwise, it really makes sense to pencil this into your sprint calendar. If you have any trees that need trimming or can get a few branches off your local freecycle/craigslist/Facebook group, and you don't mind putting in some time and effort, you will end up with a beautiful set of tree blocks your children can play with for many years, and maybe even pass on to their own children!

We had an abundance of ash trees on our property, which were too crowded and not very happy. They worked well for this project, and we get much more enjoyment out of them as blocks than we did when they were trees.

Get started making your own tree blocks

• tree branches
• a saw
• an oven or a warm spot in the sun
• a putty knife or box cutter
• ample time and patience

Select your branches. I chose a mixture of thin and thick. You will want to cut them to various lengths, but I tried to cut several the same length so they would work well for building structures. You will probably want to keep them as flat as possible, too, so that if you are building towers they aren't topsy turvy. I used a miter saw, but you can use whatever you have and are comfortable with.

Before de-barking the tree blocks

After you cut them you will want them to dry out a bit; this should help get the bark off. I sun dried mine but you can put them in the oven on the lowest setting for a few hours instead. If you are really lucky, you might get a branch where the bark just falls right off. One of our maple trees just lost a branch and I thought it would be nice to make some more tree blocks to add to our ash ones. The whole bark-removing step, which was the most time consuming of our ash tree blocks last year, took me all of 2 minutes to de-bark an 8 foot long branch. It probably took me about 2 minutes per block last spring to de-bark the ash tree blocks. The other option is to leave the bark on, for a more natural look, and then all you need to do is cut them and sand the exposed surfaces!

drying in the sun

A year later, they still look great!

These blocks have so many uses and if you can find the wood for free and have the tools (or can borrow them), this is such an inexpensive project. Sets like this you can buy can run $40! Eek! To de-bark, I cut into the bark with a blade and then peeled it back with a putty knife or my fingernails. It was fairly time consuming, but I'm really happy with the result. After all of the bark was removed, I sanded all of the block first with coarse sandpaper, and then with fine sandpaper.

Why I think you'll LOVE these 

Not only are these blocks fun to play with, they are a wonderful natural building toy! The smooth wood and weight of them is really amazingly satisfying. Please note that because they are solid wood, they can be quite heavy, so take care with little toes and fingers.

DIY Foam Sticker Stamps

Create your own homemade stamps with stickers

Make your own stamps!This is an easy and fun project. This post shows how to make them with wood blocks (they have a nice weight, and will last a long time), but you can use other materials as well. As always, use what you have.

Materials Needed to Create DIY Sticker Stamps

• scrap wood (or use bottle caps, old wooden blocks, or recyclable containers)
• sandpaper
• foam stickers or foam paper cut into shapes
• washable ink pad (you can also use washable paints on a scrap sponge)
• paper

1. Cut some blocks from scrap wood (you could also use cardboard for this though they probably won't last as long - glue a few pieces together to make them thicker). These are roughly 2.5" x 1.5" x 1":

2. Sand the blocks.

3. Choose stickers that you would like to make into stamps. You could also cut your own shapes from foam paper, or use thick rubber bands and cut and glue them on. Pro tip - to make the stamps easier to use for your little ones, place two identical stickers on top of each other (it makes the stamp part thicker and less likely to get any of the wood block on the print).

4. Stick them on to one side of the wood block, remembering that the stamp will be the mirror image of the sticker.

5. Start stamping!

You can also use plain shapes and then draw in faces, details, etc.What I love about this project is the fact that I know if the foam shape starts to wear out, it can easily be replaced/updated. Other ideas - create a set of letter and number stamps, or make your own holiday wrapping paper - click the image to read the post:

you've got mail!

I cannot understand how this wins out over other games and toys consistently, but it is one of the top three things we do with a box when we get one from our overworked UPS guy. If you activate your imagination mode, it is basically this but cheaper and more fun because you make it yourself! You can make a new one each month, when your next Amazon subscription of something kid/baby-related comes.

It can be summed up in a few simple steps:

1. Cut a slot (or two) in a box.

2. Put your mail in that box.

3. Make them open the box...and that's the way you do it!

Take everything out and repeat. Vary the sizes of the mail so they have to sort it and figure out where it goes. I sometimes give them real mail that is unimportant, or stickers to decorate the cardboard "postcards." For older kids who are reading or learning to read, you can label them with "Kitchen," "Living Room," etc. or other rooms and have them deliver the mail.  If you have two kids, you can have one deliver and one collect and they will madly run around your home like they are trapped in some M.C. Escher drawing.

See, it is basically the same thing!

seed catalog collage

I have a modest vegetable garden, which means that after a few years of ordering gardening supplies and seeds, I get bombarded with seed catalogs this time of year. Despite subscribing to a service to help minimize "junk" mail, I cannot escape it all. Of all the junk mail, though, seed catalogs are by far my kids' favorite. They provide hours of fun, both from thumbing through and naming fruits and vegetables and from the cutting and gluing the pictures to make books or collages.Here are two pictures of the collage we made this time:

I used heavy stock paper that came on a roll; I think it is matte photo paper I bought on ebay years ago for another project.  The piece above is about 9' long. What fun! Here is a picture of a book we made another time:

The same paper as the collage was cut into pages and then hole punched and held together with string.  Sometimes we group the same kind of fruits/veggies, and other times we just try to fill the pages.  

Ideas for your collages 

• sort the images by color and then make a rainbow of images
• sort the images by things your child likes to eat and doesn't like to eat, then you can compare year to year
• sort by what grows near you and what doesn't
• make each page into a "recipe" for something different, like salad, pizza toppings, the worst breakfast ever, and so on!

funky chunky crayons

A couple of weeks ago we took some old crayon bits and put them into silicone molds, microwaving them for a minute at a time until all the crayon pieces were melted.  I then put them in the garage to cool down (it was so cold that day!), popped out the crayons, and here's what we got:

fish and trees

 

skulls

They are actually more like tools to develop writing skills now.  They encourage the tripod grip way more than little crayon pieces did and they are chunky and easy to hold, especially for the 2.8 year old. The trees are particularly fun because if you hold them sideways, you can draw two or three lines at the same time and make fun things like concentric circles.