I’ve compiled a list of homemade activities that have been a hit with my daughter. Most can be modified to accommodate different age/skill levels. All of these are simple to make or print and take up vary little space. They are great for airplane flights or as a take along activity. We also play pretend school with them at home.
Match colored pom poms to the corresponding paint swatches. You can pick up a few FREE paint swatches at your local paint store for this.
I found these awesome Crayola Dry Erase Crayons that work great for this erasable coloring activity! You could also just use dry erase markers if that’s what you have on hand. AND because I obviously love laminating EVERYTHING, I frequently google “printable coloring sheets” and print whatever animal, character or sport/activity my daughter is interested in at the time. I run it through my handy dandy laminating machine and in seconds I have a fun new coloring activity!
Print these people play dough mats from Picklebums, laminate and voila! OR if you Google search “printable play dough mats” you will find dozens of other adorable ones!
I quickly typed this up, printed it out, and put it through the laminator. I forgot to save my work or I would share my word document with you. These similar 1-10 Counting Sheets on Confessions of a Homeschooler will work too!
I found this fishing game on Mama Papa Bubba. The fish are cut out of craft foam and made magnetic by hot gluing small magnets in between two foam fish cut outs (draw one fish, trace several more and cut). The fishing pole is a chopstick with floss/thread tied and glued onto it and two disk magnets on either side of the string at the bottom. The fish pond is simply a piece of light blue felt. I made a few fish with letters so I could have my daughter fish for the letter I called out.
This car map is one of my daughters favorites! It really sparks her imagination while she names each building and drives her cars to and from each spot. These printable road maps can be found on The DIY Mommy blog and then laminated.
Print the Shape Silhouette Match Up page, laminate, cut the shapes and add velcro if desired. I found this on Confessions of a Homeschooler.
We call this sewing but if you search the internet it’s called “button-snake”. For a toddler this is harder than you would think! You can find a tutorial on Happy Hooligans.
Print these Matching Color Puzzles, laminate and then cut them out. This one is also from Confessions of a Homeschooler.
For this building activity I used colored popsicle sticks and attached velcro to the front and back of each.
Print numbers, laminate, cut and added sticker dots. Let your kids put the correct number of clothes pins on each card to work on counting and recognizing numbers. As simple as this seems it is very entertaining for kiddos!
Use felt to cut out letters and have your child put them in order to form their name. My daughter learned to do this before she could actually say each letter. You could also work on other words.
I purchased these small wooden disks, traced and cut circles out of cute decorative paper and then used a paint brush to cover them with Mod Podge. This activity can be used for younger kids to make pairs or for the more advanced as a memory game (flipping the disks over). You could also stack them, count them, use them as play money or anything else your kids can think of. THEY ARE FUN!
I purchased the yellow zip bags to keep each activity organized, hole punched everything (even the bags) and added them to a 3 ring binder so we can pull it out at a moments notice!
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