Repurposing For Hands On Learning

Recently Sam has shown a ton of interest in learning letters and numbers. He runs around like a crazy person singing ABCDEHIJMNOPeeeeeeeeDubUYZ. Come on, there are some really good combinations in there! I decided to have some fun with letter sounds and try to practice some of the letters I don't hear much in Sam's alphabet song. AND, I got to repurpose something that only gets used for one month a year.

 

First, the "old" project.

This is the advent calendar I made last Christmas with the Christmas Paper Advent Calendar from Hobby Lobby. I'd love to provide a link but their customer service number tells me it's only available in the Christmas season. I guess this is very timely so that you can pick up one (or more) in August when they put Christmas out (sheesh!).

 

Handmade Advent Calendar

 

The box was $12.99 but I know I had a 40% off coupon so probably paid about $7.90. The glitter stick-on letters came from Dollar Tree but I had to buy two packages to make sure there were enough 1s and 2s so about $2.30 there. I already had the gold spray paint for the box structure and the sharpies to color the boxes.

 

I try really hard in our house to not be a candy, candy, candy family and we have about 17 million little plastic and rubber animals of the Toobs variety so I thought we'd have a Noah's Arc and add a different pair of animals each day leading up to Christmas with reindeer being the final animal. The Arc with a few animal pairs already on it is visible in the upper left background of this photo. I got the Arc from another of my favorite resources for great, cheap, product/craft supplies, Oriental Trading Company. It was $4.38 on clearance with $6 shipping which seems like a lot but I had other things in my cart too! Get it HERE.

 

"Candlelight" Dinner With My Boy

 

Even though this project only cost about $10 not including the supplies I already had, I hated to pack it away for 11 months of the year.

 

Enter - new project.

 

Handmade Learning Letters Play Box

 

I hadn't colored the back of the boxes (originally out of laziness but yay, how fortuitous!). I used a much more colorful palette for the letters side of the boxes than I had for the advent side. Unfortunately, Dollar Tree didn't have any letter stickers on this trip but Hobby Lobby had sheets for just over $4 in the scrapbooking area. Once again, we have what seems like a million little trinkets, animals, erasers, shaped beads, and tons of supplies left over from our sensory bins when Sam was a baby so, after digging I had plenty of letter specific items for each box.

 

I sort of let Sam choose how we play with the letter boxes. Sometimes, he wants to look at one box and everything in it and sometimes he wants to dump everything all over the table or a sheet on the floor and dig through it with lots of questions. I do make sure with this particular toy/tool it's always guided play though as there are small pieces and lots of them. Plus I can make sure than no matter how he's playing with the toys inside we are making our letter sounds as we go.

 

I just love it when a great item serves multiple purposes!