Homemade Blocks

Creating and building your own blocks at home is an easy solution to actually purchasing your own.  When making your own at home, you can choose what size you would like to make and you can also choose what you want them to look like.  Through homemade blocks, children learn about and develop:

• Cause and effect
• Spatial skills
• Sizes and weights of boxes 
• Eye-hand coordination

To make homemade blocks, you will need:

• Small boxes of various sizes - cereal, soap, snack
• Grocery paper sacks or wrapping paper
• Packaging tape (if you want them to last for a longer period of time)

First, stuff each box with paper to make it as firm as you want.  If you want the box to last longer, stuff it as full as you can.  Next, tape it shut on the ends and wrap it, as you would a gift, with either the grocery paper sacks or gift wrap.  The picture above is of boxes that were wrapped in white paper, but painted after to make it more colorful.  Once the box is wrapped, then continuously wrap packaging tape around the box until it is completely covered.  If the box is completely covered with tape, this allows you to be able to clean and sanitize the boxes more often, as well as making your hard work pay off and last a longer period of time.  Once completely wrapped, your homemade blocks are complete!

Share your thoughts and ideas on how you have used your blocks!

Sponge Balls

 

Sponge balls are a a great alternative to actual balls when it comes to safety.  They are very soft and versatile and can be used for numerous activities other then just using it as a ball.  Developmentally, it helps children build upon some if their skills:

• Large motor - throwing, kicking, catching
• Fine motor - grasping, picking up
• Language - discussing the textures of the ball, the colors, what you can do with it

To make one sponge ball, these are the items that you are going to need:

• 3 sponges - foam sponges work better, but you can use cellulose.  Also, different colors of sponges help to make the ball more vibrant!
• Cable ties - preferably 12 inches long
• Scissors

First, cut each sponge into three long strips and gather into a pile.  Next, when the sponges are in a pile, place the cable tie around the center and begin to pull it tightly.  Before it is as tight as it will go, move the sponges around to make it look more full.  Finally, tighten the cable tie as tight as you can, cut of the excess cable tie, and then tuck one part of the sponge over it to cover the part that was cut off for SAFETY!!  Ta-da, you have a versatile, soft sponge ball!

Other activities that you can complete with this ball include:

• Water play
• Painting
• Can toss

Do you have any other activity ideas?  Please share your thoughts and pictures with us!

How to get started...

Before I share any ideas with you, it is important that we actually have materials gathered so we are ready to make items.  It can take some time to collect some items, but on the other hand, some items are also very easy to collect.  Items that you should try to collect include:

• Empty food boxes such as cereal, granola bar, fruit snacks
• Baby food plastic containers
• Rubber bands
• Shoe box lids with old shoelaces
• Empty tissue box cubes
• Knick knak items such as buttons, paper clips, beads
• Milk jugs
• Empty plastic containers such as ketchup bottles, dish soap bottles, yogurt containers

These are just some ideas of the things that you can collect.  Overtime, it may seem like a lot is collected, but that is okay.  It is always better to have more than not enough!

For our next project, we will be making Sponge Balls.  The basic items that we will need are sponges and cable ties.  Stay tuned...