I've come up with ideas that 1) solve an existing problem or 2) fill an existing need in our home and don't generate a ton of NEW waste in the process of creation. The end result thus far is that our home is more organized than ever, the little ones and I have spent some real quality time together creating and dreaming up our projects and we've realized as a family how little we TRULY need to be HAPPY! A sort of bonus feature has been the opportunity for me to see my children develop higher self esteem as they dream up uses for things, create a plan, follow thru and get to proudly stand back in the end and see (and enjoy) the fruits of their labor. I notice them becoming more confident and dreaming up bigger ideas almost daily! I plan to share a lot of our creations with you but today we were making a new 'kit' of upcycled items for a friend and it made me think I should share our little project. I hope you have as much fun as we do with it!
Educational Games with infant, toddler and preschool little ones!
What you need:
A few cleaned yogurt cups (we used a pack of Stonyfield Farm's Yo' Baby yogurt)
A cleaned container with a lid (we used a Talenti Gelato container)
Multiple baby food (or adult!) pouch tops in a variety of colors (we had tons of Happy Family and Revolution Foods/Plum Organics tops on hand)
* For safety purposes you will need to snip the remaining little "threads" off the bottom of the tops. We used a few Sprout baby food tops and they do not leave plastic "threads" behind so they're another great option.*
Upcycled/Repurposed Yogurt cups, Gelato container and Baby food pouch tops
After cleaning everything, decorate them to your liking. We now have several Talenti Containers we've repurposed and some have been painted while others we cut out pictures and modge podged them to the container. In the photo above you can see we painted the Talenti container orange.
For the yogurt cups, if you use Stonyfield you will find that the labels easily come off to reveal a plain white cup that can quickly and easily be painted or decorated but removing the label does make the cup a bit less "sturdy" so you may want to stick/stack 2 cups together (they fit inside of each other if you just press down hard enough without the labels on).
*Side tip- The Stonyfield cups are GREAT for building "blocks" too! *
**The set you see above in the collage is white because it is actually part of our "bowling" set (stack or layout the "pins" (yogurt cups) in the proper form and use the pouch tops or other items as "bowling balls." Our older sons found they like "flicking" the tops at the stacked lids better than rolling them.
We paint the outside of the cups in primary colors to use for teaching the baby her colors in a variety of ways. One way is I will line up, say, 3 cups of different colors and 3 tops of the same color, point to each item and say the name of the item and its color to her, then hide the tops under the cups and ask her to get me a specific one. Such as, "Where is the purple cup with the yellow top in it?" In this example I would have a red, purple and yellow cup and they would all have yellow tops under them. We progressed to this stage from having 2 solid white cups and 2 different colored tops underneath. We also use a set of different colored wooden shapes with numbers on them that go to a Melissa and Doug clock set.
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| Lia during her "Courage" Vest treatment playing with cups & tops |
The possibilities really are endless! You can cut out numbers from cardboard packages and color them the same or different colors (think: hide several red 4's under different colored cups or different colored 4's under the same colored cups, or different numbers under different colored cups, different colored numbers under cups colored the same but numbered differently on top,etc) You could also use different shapes in the same manner as above. One of Lia's favorite games (and our 6 yr old's) is to play "Memory" with the cups and a variety of items. I usually start off small with 4 cups/2 pairs of items and we move up to 12, 16 or 20 cups. (for babies/toddlers you can make it easier/help reenforce the color learning by placing matching pairs under cups of the same color and using basic, similar items like colored pom pom balls or the tops) For older children use a variety of different items with different shapes, colors and textures and have them classify them into groups after they've found all the matches.
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| Double Bonus: Vest time goes by fast! |
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| "Dump and Fill" is another fun game for babies! |
If you spend just a few minutes each day with this game the pay off will be huge! Lia is 15 months old and now accurately picks the colors, numbers and letters out of the cups in up to a 12 cup lineup with different items under each! She has a 20+ word vocabulary of clear words and many that we know what she's saying but aren't quite intelligible to outsiders yet and she is advanced in many other areas of development. As a mom, that all makes me quite proud but really, the cuddles, giggles and smiles I get when we play these games together are what REALLY make it worth it!
The "feel good" factor extends to knowing that we've helped reduce our waste, saved money (by not buying a toy or toys for this purpose) and reduced our exposure to cheaply made toxic toys or potential exposure to high levels of lead on store bought painted items. (My older children like to write, "Made in the USA" on everything they make :-) )
So give it a go and rack up your own precious giggles and cuddles!
