DIY Lego Magnets

Posted on May 1, 2013 by Ness

These DIY Lego magnets would have to be one of the easiest crafts we’ve ever done. A few Lego bricks, some hot glue, a couple of magnets and voila! Instant colour and fun for the fridge. They’ve been a huge hit with the little Lego fan in our family.

MAKE DIY LEGO MAGNETS

Supplies:

Lego bricks

Strong magnets

Hot glue gun

Note: Self-adhesive magnet tape that you can buy in a roll won’t be strong enough for fridge magnets. You need something fairly strong if you want these to be practical and not just decorative. Having said that, I didn’t buy anything special for these. I used very inexpensive magnets from our local $2 shop (for my US and UK readers, that’s the Australian equivalent of the Dollar Tree). As for the glue, I used a hot glue gun and our magnets have held together perfectly. You could also use super glue or any strong glue of your choice. Regular craft glue won’t be strong enough though.

To make your Lego magnets, glue the magnet pieces to the back of the Lego bricks. That’s it! Pretty tricky right? Wait for at least 24 hours before using them. They’ll stick to the fridge just fine before then, but you don’t want to put any pressure on them to hold things to the fridge until the glue has completely dried, so it’s best to wait.

These magnets are so fun and colourful. They’ve definitely brightened our kitchen. They’d be a fun addition to a magnetic board in a home office or play room.

The magnets would also make a quick and simple DIY gift – perfect for a Lego fan – and who doesn’t know at least one? They would also be a great party favor for a Lego themed birthday party.

If this is your first time visiting One Perfect Day – welcome! If you like what you have found, please join us on Facebook or follow us on Pinterest or Twitter where you will find lots of ideas for fun kids activities, thoughts on parenting, family recipes and more.

How to make a DIY Magnetic Fishing Game

Posted on September 26, 2012 by Ness

A magnetic fishing game is a classic children’s toy and something you can easily make at home. We love to use ours with our frog pond small world play. I also recently shared how we use our fishing game to learn colours, numbers and size sorting. You can read about the various games we play here.

Here’s a brief tutorial for how I made our fishing game. If you would like to extend the learning opportunities with your own fishing game, and play the games that I talked about in this post, then here are some tips to keep in mind.

For size sorting games, make the fish different sizes.

To learn about colours then make each fish a different colour.

For counting games, embellish each fish with a different number of beads.

You will need:
Pencil
paper
scissors
felt of various colours
Sewing thread and needle
buttons and beads for decoration
Washers or paperclips
Wadding for stuffing the fish (Optional)
A twig or piece of dowel (for fishing rod)
String or wool (for fishing line)
Magnet

How to make a DIY Magnetic Fishing Game

1. Use the pencil to draw some fish shaped templates onto the paper and cut them out. I just drew mine freehand and made each fish slightly different.

2. Hold or pin the paper templates onto the felt and cut around the template outline. If you are planning on making stuffed fish like I did, then cut out two layers of felt for each template. If you don’t want to fill your fish, simply cut out one layer of felt.

3. Use the sewing thread and needle to attach beads and buttons to each fish. I used a small button for the fish eye. Add a different number of beads to each fish if you want to play number games with the fish.

4. If you are making single-layer fish, then skip ahead to step 5. If you are making stuffed fish like mine, then attach the two layers of felt together using buttonhole stitch. Before completely enclosing the hem, fill the fish with wadding and then sew shut.

5. Attach a washer (or paperclip) to the mouth. I added the washer after I had completed each fish but if you could add it on while you are sewing the buttonhole stitch around the outside of the fish in step 4.

6. We made our rod with a twig we found in our yard. You could also use a piece of dowel. Simply cut to size, attach some string (we used some pretty multi-coloured wool) and tie a magnet to the end.

You’re done! Happy fishing!

There are so many ways to make a magnetic fishing game and you certainly don’t have to sew the fish or even use felt. You could simply cut out some fish using coloured paper and attach a paperclip to each one. You could still make them different sizes and colours, and to use them for counting games, simply draw a different number of dots or shapes on each one. Here are some more ideas for creating your own magnetic fishing game.

Go Fish Maths Game – Nurturestore

Fishing for Words – 3 Dinosaurs

Pretend Camping with Bailey Goes Camping – 2 Big 2 Little

Fishing for Letters – Growing a Jeweled Rose

Science Math and Reading, All in One – Creekside Learning

Quick DIY Fishing Game – Glittering Muffins

Water Table Fishing – In Lieu of Preschool

Fishin’ In The Kitchen – Sugarsnips

If this is your first time visiting One Perfect Day – welcome! If you like what you have found, please join us on Facebook or follow us on Pinterest. We are always sharing new ideas to play, learn, create and explore.

Molded crayon party favors

Posted on June 5, 2012 by Ness

R’s 4th birthday is coming up in a few weeks and I’m in full party planning mode. Right now, I’m putting together ideas for the favors. I’ve been seeing those cute DIY molded crayons all over Pinterest for so long and I decided to make some as a practise run for the party. There are a few different ways to create them, so I made two batches using a different method each time. My goal was to discover which was the simplest method while producing the best results.

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{Ice-Skating in the Living Room}

Posted on May 8, 2012 by Ness

One evening last week, R(3) watched a TV program, I’m not sure what it was exactly, where the main characters were skiing. He began sliding his feet around the living room pretending to ski and repeated over and over that he wanted to go to the snow. I immediately had an idea. I couldn’t make it snow in the living room. I could however, turn the carpet into an ice-rink! First, R would need a pair of ice skates.

I took a plastic shopping bag from the cupboard and used a pair of scissors to cut two large rectangles from the bag. I wrapped them around R’s feet, and used lots of adhesive tape to secure the plastic “ice-skates” in place.

I was working fast to keep the momentum of R’s imaginative play going so they were not fancy to look at. This was just about getting something happening quickly and making his feet sliiiiiide over the carpet like he was skating. He loved it!

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Friday Flashback – A Safe Way For Kids to Reach The Kitchen Bench

Posted on March 2, 2012 by Ness

Each week I look back at some of the things we did during my pre-blogging days. I affectionately call these posts my Friday Flashback series. A few people contacted me this week, asking what the blue structure is that R(3) is seen standing on, in our mixing oil and water post. It is a fantastic tool that we use every single day in our kitchen and so I’ve decided to make it the topic of this week’s Friday Flashback.

This is what we affectionately call the “blue thing”. It is our DIY version of a Little Helper Funpod. “What on earth is a Little Helper Funpod?” I hear you ask. The original Funpod can be seen here. It’s a safe structure for kids to stand on while working at high benches such as in the kitchen. MUCH safer than the dining chair we had been been using! We always involve R with whatever we are doing, and that includes cooking family meals (it’s part of the whole Montessori approach that we try to implement). Before we built this, he would stand on one of our dining chairs. The chair was unstable, it would frequently slip out from under him as he pushed against the kitchen bench and I was always concerned about him falling off the side. I was familiar with the official Funpod and knew it would be ideal, but they retailed for upwards of $300 so it was well beyond our budget. Thanks to Pinterest, I found this DIY project from the completely amazing, talented and generous Ana White. If you’re not already familiar with Ana White, take a minute to visit her site. She designs and builds hundreds of DIY furniture projects (all of them completely gorgeous) and she shares the plans for FREE. How completely amazing is she?

No toppling over or falling off the stool any more.

All together, including materials and paint, this cost us about $70 to build. It would be even less if you arleady had some paint on hand. Mr Perfect Day whipped this up in a few hours and it was painted by yours truly. This was the first thing I had ever painted in my entire life and I was so proud of myself. I think it took me longer to paint it than it did for Mr Pefect Day to build it! Ha!

The reasons why I am completely in love with this helper tower are:

The height of the platform where the child stands is completely adjustable. As your child grows, just lower the platform.
The child is contained on all four sides
it is very solid and stable

I actually like this version of the helper tower MORE than the expensive Funpod version for two very important reasons:

In this version, the child can us the rungs of the tower as a ladder and can climb in and out of the tower independently. (In the Funpod version, the child must be lifted in and out of the tower)
And the very BEST feature of all…..it folds flat for storage. (You can’t do THAT with the pricey version!)