Juice Lids!

In November we had an "idea fair" of homemade Christmas gifts (simple, inexpensive things)--more on that later. But in addition to the ideas on display, we had three "make and takes" available. I'll post on the third one later, but here are the first two:

Jumbo Bank

For this activity, you need juice lids, a peanut butter jar, and colored paper, stickers, or both. If you want to go the extra mile, you also need clear Contact or laminating paper. I suppose you'll also need an exacto knife or something to cut the slit in the jar lid, and scissors or a circle cutter to cut the paper. :)

You can decorate the "coins" however you'd like. When I made mine, I cut colored paper slightly smaller than the middle of the juice lids. Then I put stickers on the paper and attached the paper to the lids with a little bit of glue. I cut circles from clear contact paper, slightly bigger than my colored paper circles, and I "laminated" the paper circles to the juice lids. This protects the designs from exploring little mouths...and protects those cute little mouths, too--from swallowing paper or a sticker or something.

I've gotta say, I've had this toy around for years now and my kids still love it! They never seem to be too old to put the "coins" in the slot!

Star Match Game

For this one, I turned to the good old juice lids again! I used patterned Contact paper for the backs, which was a really easy way to make the backs uniform. Then I just used those great star stickers to make pairs of matching patterns on the other side. I did patterns of two, three, and four stars each, and that provides a simple enough game for really young ones with some help, yet challenging enough for some older ones (it's more challenging than you think, looking at all of those stars!). I've had a lot of fun playing this game with my kids, and it was SO simple, cheap, and quick to make!