Homemade Toy - Cereal Box Marble Run

This project was inspired by a blog post by Made by Joel.  I saw this blog post three years ago and thought it was great fun!  My daughter was still too young then to be playing with small marbles and I wasn't sure if she'd sneak a marble into her mouth while playing (choking hazard!), so this  idea was shelved for later.

Fast forward to five days ago...we were at the supermarket and little daughter asked me to buy her another baby doll or Barbie.  But since both her baby doll and Barbie collections are bursting at the seams, I tried to negotiate.  We made a round of the toy section and school supplies section and stumbled upon these marbles!  A mere P 20.00 (that's about half a US dollar) for about 50 pieces!!!  And when she saw it, she burst out in excitement, "Marbles!"  Yay for me!

To my surprise, the marbles were a great hit!  Not only with her but with her cousins.  They played with the marbles the night we bought them...and the next day...and the next.  There were marbles all over the house - on rugs, corners, behind the couch, by the dining table.  It was fun to watch them enjoying and experimenting with the marbles!  They rolled them down the hallway, flicked them and rolled them down a makeshift slide that they made out of our living room cushion.

Then I remembered Made by Joel's Cereal Box Marble Run!  I made them a couple of times for the boys at school and wondered how the girls would like it.  I saved two cereal boxes and made this marble run version in about 10 minutes.  I used masking tape to adhere the cardboard cutouts to the wall under the stairs.

Watch them go!

Weeee!!!

I followed Made by Joel's tutorial and left a little ledge at the bottom to keep the marbles from rolling out of the box.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that they loved it more than I expected!  One afternoon, my daughter spent hours (yes, hours!) playing with this marble run.

Made by Joel has a detailed tutorial on how to make one.  If you try it out, we hope you have as much fun with it as we have! : )

Party Paperminties

 

Paperminties is proud to announce its newest product offering  to help you with your party needs - “party paperminties!”

Party paperminties are cut-paper party decorations which include:

1. Large Wall and/or entryway Décor
2. Birthday Poster/Banner with the celebrant’s name
3. Table Centerpiece Sticks
4. Table Confetti 

Large Wall Decor

Large Wall Decor

Large Wall Decor

Birthday Poster/Banner

Large Wall Decor with Birthday Banner

Table Centerpiece Sticks

Table Centerpiece Sticks

 

Table confetti

Paperminties’ first party is Miguel’s fifth “Snakes” themed birthday! 

Miguel only wanted orange, yellow and green snakes as party décor!  So glad he was pleased with the results!

Here are some photos of his fun, slithery “Snakes” party.

 

Big, big thanks for asking paperminties to do your cut-paper party decor, Miguel!

With four more parties underway, paperminties is really excited to feature more party paperminties in upcoming posts!  Do watch out for them in the next few weeks!

If you need us to customize your next party with cut-paper party decor, just let us know by sending us a private message through our Facebook page - www.facebook.com/paperminties. ; )

Homemade Montessori - Cards and Counters

This is one of the simpler Montessori DIYs I've made. I made this about a year ago.  Like the Felt Moveable Alphabet, this was to supplement my daughter's lessons at school.

When I first encountered this Montessori manipulative, I remembered how we were first taught 'numbers and counting' in the traditional school I attended back in the day - learning mostly from textbooks and hardly working on anything concrete or tangible (which would have made me learn faster and more effectively). I have since appreciated how this material is tactile, that it not only helps children recognize numbers, their sequencing and their corresponding quantities but it also introduces "odd" and "even" numbers.

These are the Montessori numbers and counters we use at the preschool where I used to work.  Photo courtesy of absorbentminds.co.uk

I have been on the lookout for shops selling Montessori materials, keeping an eye out for the red 'numbers and counters,' but haven't encountered any so I decided to make my own.

These are the materials I sourced for this project:
1. Blank flash cards - a supermarket find.  You may also use index cards.
2. Green marker- to match the glass stones.
3. Green glass stones which have flat undersides - I found these in Divisoria.  (I saw some glass stones in SM but the undersides were not flat).  Other DIY moms have used bottle caps, acorns, pine cones and even Teddy Grahams!  So you can be creative! 
4. Plastic container for the glass stones.


I use the cards for practicing sequencing.

And the number cards and counters (glass stones) for learning corresponding number quantities.

For the cards, I just wrote the numbers on the cards and drew uneven circles to resemble the glass stones.

It is important to put the exact number of counters or in this case, glass stones for numbers 1 to 10 (55 pieces) to serve as a self-check or control of error.

At times, my daughter would rather count the glass stones without the cards which also makes for good counting practice so I don't mind.

Other times, the glass stones are used for "cooking" in the Homemade Toy Kitchen (along with beans and shells) or used as "treasure" so we are almost out on glass stones.  Haha!  Time to replenish.

If you want to learn more about using this material, this post is a step-by-step tutorial on how to best use it.  You may also check out  this post to see how Lisa Nolan, a Montessori mom, uses this material with her child.

Painting Tissue Roll Owls

The hoarder in me started collecting tissue paper rolls months back for crafts with the little ones or a DIY project for the home.  It wasn't till today that painting them tickled our fancy!

I saw these cute tissue roll owls on pinterest  and thought it best to get messy and paint the tissue rolls instead (I later found out that one of the little ones had already done something similar during summer school!  Oh well! :)).

So what started out looking like this:

...was transformed into this for some crayon-resist art.

My daughter wanted to prepare some herself too for the cousins.

Then we moved outdoors for some messy painting fun!

These are some "BEFORE" shots.

I only put primary paint colors so they practice making secondary colors in the process.  I love it when they say, "Look, I made green!" or "Look, I made purple!"

And some "AFTER" shots.

!!!

 Some action shots while they were hard at work.

Quite fun so I painted some tissue roll owls myself!

Here are some of our tissue roll owls ( I think we painted nine it total).

I painted the first two.  Didn't the little ones do a better job?!

This is another easy peasy, fun craft activity that every kid (and kid-at-heart) will enjoy!

Try it yourself! = )