Hellobee

When it comes to providing fun activities for Little Lion to do throughout the day I commonly run into two big problems:

1) I have a hard time thinking of ideas off the top of my head and don’t always want to dig through Pinterest to find something.

2) I hate when setting up an activity takes more time than the activity itself!

A good friend of mine has similar struggles in this area, and since her daughter’s second birthday is right around the corner, I decided to to solve this problem for myself, but also for her family, by creating a ready to go activity kit, complete with everything she would need to do lots of different activities.

I also compiled a list of 20 activities (enough for one every week day of the month!) that use common household materials. All of these activities are quick to set up, and don’t require anything expensive. Some are craft related and some are more of a Montessori tray style activity. Some are messy, and some are not. All of them are Little Lion approved!

Then I made a shopping list (click here for the printable pdf version)!

I purchased all of these materials for the kit and was able to get many of them at the dollar store. The ones I didn’t find there I got at either Target, Walmart, or AC Moore.

Now, if you are making this kit for yourself, you probably don’t need to buy most of these items. The ones you have laying around the house are just fine. But I love the idea of having a set of materials all in one place so that I have them ready to go when it’s time to do an activity, and wanted to add this level of convenience for my friend.

Next, I packed the boxes! I put all of the loose materials that didn’t come in a resealable bag into clear plastic bags for ease of use. I mixed up the play dough mix and put that in a clear plastic bag too. Then I packed all of these items into the large boxes. These boxes are clear so you can easily see what you are looking for, and they would also work great as sensory bins for some of the sensory activities.

Finally, I set up all the activities, photographed the materials, and made some handy printable cards (that you can print by clicking here)!

I printed and cut out the cards (if you don’t cut down the middle you can fold them in half) and then used a glue stick to attach the back to the front of each of the activity cards. This made them thick enough that they didn’t need to be printed on heavy paper.

I hole punched them and used a book ring to hold them all together. I also mounted the cover page to some thicker card stock and pretty scrapbook paper that I already had at home to dress it up a bit, but this step is definitely not necessary. You could even skip the cutting and gluing altogether and just staple the pages together.

I am so excited about the way this turned out! I even made a second booklet for myself to keep in my kitchen (where I keep almost all of these materials already!) so that picking an activity for LL will always be easy!

I’m sure I didn’t think of everything…what materials would you add to this kit?