My kids tend to be losers (wait, that came out very wrong) — My kids tend to lose things (better). My oldest has gotten much better with taking proper care of her things, but my little ones still tend to misplace things daily.
It is difficult for them …. I can appreciate this. They are creative little people, so they may take a toy car into their spaceship (bed) and then the spaceship crashes so they need a firetruck (leave toy car in bed, get firetruck). When the firetruck is putting out the fire it is realized there is no hose … a puzzle piece is quickly grabbed and it becomes the hose … and on it goes.
Well, it should be no wonder that we have a couple of puzzles with missing pieces. After doing a big clean this past weekend (not even kidding — we truly did!) I came to realize that one of our puzzles would simply never be whole again.
So what to do with the extra puzzle pieces? Why make crafts with puzzle pieces of course!
There are so many crafts with puzzle pieces on Pinterest. It is really amazing. I almost want to encourage my losers (Terrible! I mean my children who lose things) to use the puzzles a bit more so I have an excuse to make more crafts.
I thought that some of the puzzle pieces sort of looked like people … so with a little bit of paint – and a little bit of squinting – we created these cute puzzle piece children in snowsuits.
They were very easy to make and perfect for all 3 of my little ones to do together. A great craft for big kids, preschoolers, and toddlers.
The kids began by painting the back of the puzzle pieces. Ben, who is 2, simply painted many colours all over his puzzle piece … learning to use a paint brush, about colour mixing, and fine motor skills too.
The older ones painted the middle of the puzzle piece one colour and then painted different colours for the mittens, boots, and face.
Once they were dry, we glued some pieces of cotton balls around the face (which was suppose to look like the fur lining of a hood, though Madeline declared it made all the children look like they had beards and white hair) and around the cuffs of the sleeves and pants.
This added a neat sensory piece to the craft as well. Sam who is 4 and a little more hesitant with certain sensory activities had a wet cloth beside him to wipe of his gluey fingers before adding the cotton. Ben enjoys the sensory piece to these activities and wound up more glued with cotton than his little puzzle piece.
We ended up attaching a string to the back of these little puzzle piece crafts and hanging them in our Christmas tree – though they would be a lovely winter craft as well.
This was a fun way to use up some extra puzzle pieces that would have otherwise been a waste. A healthy mix of recycling, creativity, crafting and paint – what all childhoods should be made of!
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