DIY: Felt Bean Bags

I made these bean bags for us to play different games. They are great for outdoors and indoors. They are super simple and fun to make. It's a great feeling to see your child play with something that's especially handmade  for them. The kids love the way they feel and the little sound it makes when its moved. We used felt, but they can be made with other fabrics as well. Hope you enjoy making them for your little ones.

Here's what you'll need:

Felt in assorted colors
Scissors
Strong thread or embroidery floss
Needle
(Optional: Sewing machine if you don't want to hand stitch the pieces together.)

Once you have all the supplies cut 2 pieces of felt in the shape you would like your bean bags to be. Then start stitching the side using the blanket stitch (I really like the way it looks on the finished bean bag). Before closing the bag fill it with rice/beans/ lentils and then stitch it close.

Here are some fun things that can be done with bean bags.

1. Balancing game - walking with the bean bag on the head, we count, say our letters, Haroof and recite while playing our balancing game.
2. Bean Bag toss - in baskets or in a scoring bean bag toss we made from a cardboard box.
3. Pass the bean bag in a circle - we made up a few fun ways to do the passes
4. Played catch the bean bag
5. We passed them saying colors in English and Arabic. Its a great for color recognition.
6. Counting by 2s, 5s, 10s can be made fun too with bean bags.

DIY: Wood Math board

A great project to do with kids at home to introduce woodwork. Its a great tool to learn Math through play. It gives children a chance to practice holding yarn and weave it around the nails, they can learn yarn tension before they actually start knitting.

AR helped me mark the wood circle and then hammered the nails in place with me. Then we made many different shapes on it using different colored yarn, I chose bright spring colors to go with our spring theme these days. Even H played with it. 

We got the idea from this video. 

Counting Practice

I have tried to teach numbers to AR a few different ways... so last week I wrote numbers down on our white board from 0 to 9 and then 10 to 19 and 20 to 29 and so on to explain the concept in brief words... he seem to get it alhumdulillah! So then I thought a lot of how to make it fun but also a good learning experience with numbers. I use our numbers for calendars but I kept thinking of some idea and then i thought of the above Be'dhnillah (by Allah's permission). While making it I thought about making the font color lighter so he can practice tracing on them too. Alhumdulillah he really enjoyed making and using it with Mama.

Number Puzzle

Jumbo number puzzle train. Its a great puzzle we picked up last summer from States for $ 2!! Its great for Boys!

Counting

Counting Practice, Phonics cards my dear friend let me borrow!

AR had to match all the numbers and pile them all on the top.

Play-dough numbers

We bought these play-dough number cutters the kids, for only 2 RIYALS!!

AR had a great fun/learning experience. Its a great way to teach counting and number recognition. The set also included addition subtraction, multiplication and division cutters to teach Math at a later stage inshaAllah.