Simple Homemade Puzzles

Hi Friends! Still hear, plugging along. Lots of friends going through rough stuff right now. But we still have two kids that need to keep busy. Actually now more than ever, as we try to help with clean up and projects, and just being there for friends, keeping them busy so we can get stuff done is an especially good thing. Here's a couple activities that only take a minute to round up but can keep kiddos busy for a while. Remember when we made star crayons?

Well, it turns out that the mold and the crayons make a great toddler puzzle, because all the pieces fit in all the spots! Thing Two loves to push a star into each spot, then I pop them back out and he does it again. Sounds boring, but he loves it, it will do it over and over! 

At Home Depot the other day I picked up a few of these leaf shaped paint samples. I plan to draw a tree trunk and branches and let the boys glue the leaves on wherever they want to fill out the tree. 

The possibilities are endless here, but here's another thing we did: I traced the shapes in the different colors,

 then Thing Two matched the colors up, like a puzzle.

For older kids, try just giving them a couple of the shapes and see how they can incorporate them into a drawing. Thing One used a blue one to make a whale in an ocean scene. 

That's our easy entertainment these days. Hope you are well! Thanks for reading!

- Haley