Plastic bottle rake

My little one saw someone rake leaves in the garden and wanted to do just that. I made her a rake with plastic bottle and gave her some paper leaves to work on...she absolutely loved it. 

DIY Mini carom board

I made this mini carom board using Amazon Packaging material and a few bottle caps.

I marked the 4 corners to cut out for the coins to drop.

  

This is how the back side looks like you can tape it up to give the board a sturdy base.

This is now the board would finally look like, you can add the lines and center markings to make it look more real. Before I could take pictures of those, mine was out for use, and an overly excited toddler ended up tearing it up in the very first match :(

Color with water - Busy bag for toddlers

A simple activity to keep your tiny ones busy. I have used a piece of cardboard - reused carton box. Colourful bottle caps to hold water, this way she gets a feel of using real colours. And some paint brushes. Voila, you get 30 minutes of your time :)

Roll and Play Card Game for Toddlers

Idea courtesy: icanteachmychild.com

I have used the following colors and themes:

• Yellow:  Directions.  -- Up, Down, Right, Left
• Violet:  Body Parts.  --Point your nose, Touch your toes, Nod your Head, Show your ears
• Green:  Animal Sounds.  --Roar like a lion, Moo like a cow, Meoww like a cat, Quack like a duck
• Orange:  Counting.  -- Clap your hands two times, Blink 3 times, turn around once, Jump 4 times
• Blue:  Colors.  -- What colour is your dress/tshirt?, Show me something black, Bring your yellow ball, Get your pink bat
• Red:  Action Cards. -- Jump, Dance, Sing, Clap

This is how our cards look like

                      

         

 

   

Before the cards got their color

       

 

Use a soft dice with all the 6 colors. You can make one on your own, just follow the steps here.

DIY Butterfly Board game for toddlers

You can create your own board games to teach new things. I made this first board game for my 2-year old daughter. It is to help Miss. Butterfly find her way home. 

 The flowers and strawberry are to show the food that butterfly eats, and the spider's web and net are the possible dangers to the butterfly. Later I will bring in little rules to the game, when she has a play date.

• Landing on spider/net means a restart
• Landing on flower lets you advance by one step if you tell the correct color of the flower
• Landing on the strawberry lets you advance by 2 steps if you name the fruit correctly
• The one who reaches the home first is the winner
• Roll 1 on the dice to start
  

 This was our game as "Work in Progress"

That is our Miss. Buttefly, cut out from the cardboard/reused carton box and pasted on a bottle cap. And this is how you make your own soft dice.

DIY Soft dice

 

That is how your soft dice would look like, you can have them with the conventional dots or colors to help teach toddlers.

You can reuse any piece of cloth, preferably white for ease of coloring. I have used 4 cms by 4 cms for each of the squares. Use a pattern like above, keep a small margin of 0.5 cm and cut the rest off. Keep aside the pieces for stuffing

Start stitching along the lines, this is how the first line would look like after stitching

Remember to leave out one square as you stitch for the stuffing to go in, this is how your dice will look like now.

I have added small square cardboard pieces on all sides, top and bottom for the dice to retain its shape.

Continue stuffing the dice with any cloth/poly filling, top it with the square piece of cardboard, and stitch the sides as well.

You are ready to add details to the dice, dots or colors kids are sure to love them.

Zero cost colouring cards/flash cards

As your LO learns to use crayons and explores the world of colours, it is difficult to contain their excitement in a few pages or books. The excercise to teach them to colour only in those pages is tiresome indeed. Once this is achieved it is difficult to control the excitement of these little colour genies, who can fill the whole paper with colourful lines in a matter of seconds. No amount of colour books are going to be sufficient, as they get filled with colours before you turn your back.

I finally gave up to the idea of books and decided to create my own colouring cards, with a bonus that this woudl cost me zero. Well almost zero cost, all you need are empty carton boxes, (cereal, muesli, etc) with plain insides that can be used to draw simple everyday objects/animals, and a black pen/pencil. You could try the ones I have done here, or look at one of the tutorials online where they teach you to draw simple figures.

   

Snowman

Birds Nest

XMas Tree

Her little fingers...

...modified into exotic birds

Carrot, Apple, Pumpkin, Telephone, Clock, Duck...

Your palm could become a finger family

 As you finish the big rectangular pieces, your LO will definitely want many more on the smaller pieces as well, like in our case. And so the doodling continued...

Joker, Toothbrush - toothpaste, Mobile, Pencil

Giraffe, Elephant, funny looking owl

Caterpillar, Train

Happy Coluring :)

Fill up the bottle - activity for toddlers

Just give your toddler a bunch of colourful bottle caps and a bottle with its base cut, she will figure out ways to drop the cap one by one into the bottle, rattle it often and after putting a good number into it enjoy the play of colours in the bottle :)

Building blocks

Bottle caps make great building blocks too. Here are some of our building designs.

Stacking toy with everyday objects

Just use about anything from curd containers to cereal boxes. Kids love it all the more when it gets taller than them.

Beading Toy

Pincer grasp would be an art your toddler would have mastered by now or is practicing his way towards being a master. In either cases this beading toy will help them hone their skills while also teaching them some perseverance :). You can use pasta, fruit looks, cardboard rings and so on, and so can you use bottle caps. Beading is an excellent way to teach Fine Motor skills.

Check this out to see how to use bottle caps for beading.

Play with Numbers

You could introduce the world of numbers in a play way using bottle caps. Let your imagination run wild making a hungry caterpillar, number train and so on once you have them on the bottle caps.

Teaching the ABC's

 Alphabets on bottle caps can be a great way to introduce the ABC's to your Little One. Alphabet blocks end up with missing alphabets pretty soon, this set can be replenished anytime with marker and new bottle caps.
Worry not if you have a Doctor's handwriting ;) you could always use a stencil to get them right.

Stacking toys for teaching colours

Another simple use of bottle caps is to teach toddlers stacking as well as colours at the same time.