"Back to School" for Littles Part 3

Puzzles!
I love puzzles, and I seemed to have passed it on to Mackay. He has a handful of wooden puzzles; three are from Grandma, and my lovely Aunt thought of us when she had a chance to pick up some puzzles from her kids' Montessori school.

So when I was at East Idaho's Biggest Garage Sale I kept my eyes peeled for more wooden puzzles. The hardest part is finding ones with all the pieces! At the end of the day I had picked up a number puzzle for about $1. It wasn't in great condition, the stickers were peeling off the numbers, and it was pretty dirty. 

Undaunted, I set to work to make the puzzle nice again. Here's the sad part. I can't find any of my before and during pictures! What I did is pretty basic. I started out with baby wipes, which got the dirt off. Then I sanded the whole thing, aside from the grooves where the pieces sit. It took a really long time to sand the stickers off the top of the puzzle pieces, but it was definitely worth the work! 

I recovered the puzzle pieces with scrapbook paper from The Guy Stack and the All About Boys Stack (the same stack I used for his notebook). It took just a little modge podge and then I re-sanded around the edges of the numbers to give them a smooth finish.

I used a few layers of acrylic paint (by a few I mean 10+) to cover up the weird pictures that were in the number grooves. If I had been smart, I would have started with one layer of black, then hopefully one layer of white and one of red. Instead, I did about 8 layers of white and 2 of red (and you can still see the pictures if you look hard enough).

Mack was really excited to get a new puzzle.

He's really into counting things lately, so this is perfect.

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"Back to School" for Littles Part 2

Rexburg has this Back to School festival every year in Porter Park. Businesses set up booths with carnival games, there's free food and lots of activities. We didn't make it last year, but did this year and it was really a lot of fun. They had a lot of things we didn't do because Mack is just too small, like rock climbing walls, giant bowling, and a life-size Angry Birds game.

We ended up with a few free books:

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Mack really enjoyed playing all the carnival games. There was a little obstacle course, a ring toss, a fishing pond, and so many other fun games!  Unfortunetely, I didn't get any pictures because I was helping him play. 

I did, however, get a few pictures (with our point and shoot) of Mack's favorite part of the event-- the train ride!

Does your community have any back to school activities?

Another thing we took part in recently was the Summer Reading Program at the library. We completed the whole thing for Mack, and most of the program for me as well (because the books I read to him counted towards my page total). We ended up with some cool prizes! I can't wait to participate again next year with two little men to read to.

More "Back to School" projects coming soon!

"Back to School" for Littles Part 1

I don't have a kiddo getting ready for school this year. In fact, it will be two more years before we even do Pre-School.
But I find myself wanting to join in the fun! Don't we all love this time of year? New clothes for school, and that fantastic school supply smell. I know all those kids are just itching to use their brand new crayons. I always was. I was one of those kids who kept my school things as nice as possible for as long as I could. Which was something I'm sure my parents loved, because it meant  they didn't have to buy as many new things.
Mack isn't at the point where he needs a new wardrobe. He's still got lots of hand-me downs. But he will be getting a few new things from Project Run and Play, and other sewing/knitting/crocheting adventures. And his daddy bought him pack of McQueen socks!



While my parents were visiting a while ago Grandma gave Mack his very own box of brand new crayons. He doesn't need them, he's still got plenty of crayons in great condition (he's really only been coloring for a year), but as my mom said, "everyone deserves to get in on the fun of back to school."

And that is what got me thinking.
So I decided to make him a few "back to school" things to go in his little messenger bag.

First off is this cute notebook:

It's just modge podge and scrapbook paper from this stack.

The font I used for his name is Badonk-a-donk.

I let him color with his new crayons.

He wanted me to write his name down for him. He says, "M, C, K" as he scribbles in his notebook. He also really loves tracing his hands, which is something they seem to do a lot of in nursery.

Come back tomorrow for the next installment!