Mind Games

The theme for the Unplug Your Kids challenge this week was container… and I knew right away what I wanted to do.  Every time we go to the craft store, the kids (JediBoy especially) are eying the plain wooden boxes and thinking of a million ways they would be fun!

So we spent about $10 at the craft store buying 4 boxes – a large, flat one for JediBoy and three small boxes for BabyGirl: a triangle, a circle, and a square.  I pulled out some paint and some brushes as well as a box of small stick-on foam shapes, and we were ready to go.

JediBoy painted his box gold – when the paint was wet it looked murky and dull, but as it dried, the sparkle and sheen of the gold really came through.

After it was mostly dry, he added some details on the top.  He says he’s going to use it for treasures. This was a simple & enjoyable craft for him and he’s thrilled with the end result.

Originally I thought I’d let BabyGirl independently paint and sticker one wooden box too, but the selection of boxes at the store gave me a little inspiration.

I worked with BabyGirl (mostly hand-over-hand) to base paint the three boxes: we made a red triangle, a yellow circle and a blue square.

When the paint was dry, we sat together at the table for a long time. I would choose a small foam sticker, ask her what shape it was, have her find the matching shape box and stick it on. We did 10 stickers of each kind so that I can use these for a little counting practice too.

Once the boxes were finished, we looked around the room and found two things of each shape to put inside the boxes… with plenty of room for more!

Now we can use these boxes to talk about colors, count to 30, sort objects by shape, go on a shape scavenger hunt, and more. BabyGirl loves to put things in bags and boxes (like her Rainbow Bags that we use to talk about color) and these boxes are already a favorite!

I love it when one small idea turns into something even better!

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 5th, 2009 at 9:09 pm and is filed under arts, crafts & activities, toddler time, unplug. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.