I-Spy Activities

I've been reading Delia Creates for a long time (like shortly after she started). She has a lot of fun kid ideas and activities that she does with her two boys (and now baby girl!).  This is one of my favorites. It's a DIY I-Spy book. You can find Delia's here. I made this about a year ago for Thing One and he still likes to look at it sometimes. I think he likes that it's all his toys; things that he's familiar with.

Just arrange the toys for each scene, snap a picture and get them all printed out. Then put them in a cheap photo book (think dollar store) and let your kiddo search through a mini book of their own toys. Each picture has two pages, one with a photo list of what to look for and the other with the I-spy scene. I don't want to bore you so here's just a quick look at Thing One's I-spy scenes.

As I said I made the I-spy book a year or more ago. Since then I started seeing these I-spy bottles and thought that looked like an great riding in the car activity for Thing One. I based mine on one I pinned from here. I once bought a mega button mix at Hobby Lobby that came with all these things that are not buttons. I guess you can use them for 3-D scrap booking or something. I didn't really know what to do with them, so I had sorted out all the non buttons and they were exactly what I needed for this project. 

I arranged them into little categories and took a picture so that Thing One would know what to look for.  Don't forget to take a picture before you put them in the bottle! I almost forgot. Once I got the picture printed I stuck it into the I-spy photo book, so that all our I-spy fun is in one place. But you could just get a little sleeve for the one picture, that way it doesn't get crumpled up and kids can mark off what they find with a (washable) dry erase marker.

Then sprinkle your little treasures into a clear container with rice, and seal the top. I hot glued around the cap of this one before I put it in. If you don't have a clear bottle handy you could make a clear vinyl bag like this one. If you still have a road trip in your summer plans, this is a great quiet car activity!

Happy spying!

Thanks for reading!

- Haley