All I want for Christmas is a felt board and lots of felt!

I can't believe how busy I have been this week, not that I'm complaining because it's all involved Christmas projects :) Seriously fun ones to! It all started when thought I'd do a pre Christmas toy cull in the girls bedroom and it suddenly dawned on me just how many toys they actually have. Lets just say it's a ridiculous amount and most of them don't even get played with. So instead of spending a small fortune on overpriced toys that will no doubt be played with for a week before being dragged to the depths of a dark toy box, I thought I'd make the girls a few gifts, ones that I think they will use over and over again and that will encourage a bit more learning that the usual whizz bang, flashing light, noisy toys they get.
So idea number one on my to do list was a felt board. I'd been looking for one for a few months but the only ones I have found have been rather small and came with very limited pieces and only had one theme, like a farm yard or ballerinas. I wanted something that had lots of themes and lots of pieces so my kids wouldn't get bored. That's when I decided I would have a go at making my own and boy am I glad I did! I will admit this has been a very time consuming project but it will be so worth the time and effort spent in making it. The easy part is finding a sturdy piece of board and gluing a piece of felt to it. Place the felt under the board, cut the felt so it's around 3cm longer around the edges than the board, snip the corners of the felt so there isn't so much bulk in the material when you fold the sides over, then glue the edges down...simple :) Now it's time to decide on a few themes and start cutting and gluing! I cheated a bit and googled a bunch of images to use as templates, unfortunately my drawing skills leave a lot to be desired! Anyway, here's what I've done so far...
On the Farm.

Under The Sea!

The Alphabet { I plan to add some lower case letters and numbers soon and even some math symbols }

Bugs!

I've also started making a Mr and Mrs Potato head with accessories and some simple shapes. If you have older kids you could even give them a bunch of felt and some glue to make their own scenes. And the best part...it's never ending fun, as long as you have felt, you can always make new bits to play with, the only limit is your imagination :)

Project No.2 coming soon......