For Ellie's 2nd birthday I wanted to make her a gift to celebrate all the new things she is learning and will be mastering this coming year. One thing that she is in LOVE with is horses, or "neigh neighs."
So the day before her birthday (while Ellie was napping) I whipped up {this little} Felt Farm Playmat. You could use this idea with any favorite animal--or all of the farm together. But we were throwing Ellie a Pony Party and so that's what you'll see below ;)
I started out with 2 pieces of felt and some buttons. Ellie will be learning how to do buttons this coming year and this will be a fun way for her to practice them:
Each button color on the farm playmat coordinates with a kind of food that her horses eat (hay, apples, carrots, water, and grass--which is hay, I know!). Since she's also learning how to count, I attached a different number of colored beads to each "food" for her to count.
I always use 3 strands of DMC floss (half of the whole strand it comes in) when I'm making something for my kids. It's thicker than thread and holds up to play so much better than regular thread.
To attach the beads I just wrapped each one through twice and then went to the next one, stitching it to the "food," and tying it off at the end.
Ellie can unbutton the "food' and put it in the {little} bucket for the horses to eat:
Ellie loves to sort {little} things right now and she's getting good with her colors. So when I made the floor of the barn/corral I made it different colors. And I didn't sew the whole color on, just the sides and bottom of it, turning it into lots of {little} pockets, which she also really likes right now.
So now she can sort her "neigh neighs" into the pockets:
Or she can stand the animals up in the barn/corral. For my 4 walls/fence I used a double layer of felt on the top and bottom to make it more sturdy. Sewing all the edges of the felt together gave it a "wood" look.
Ellie also got these {little} horses for her birthday to play with. They are perfect to sort with and fun to count with too.
You can find them here:
So this is what {this little project} looks like altogether:I always love it when I can sneak a {little} learning into lots of great playtime.
The farm play mat was a hit--she loves it!
And I made it easy to clean up--it all rolls up into this, with the corral, food, and pond inside.
And it's portable. All the horses and the bucket go into this cute {little} "neigh neigh" bag her grandma sent for her birthday (thanks Mom!)
And Jay and Kay's contribution (other than active support while I was putting this altogether) was gluing a {little} roof together for the barn!
I'm totally in denial that my baby is two, and yet looking forward to all the fun we're going to have doing "little projects" together this year--I can't wait!
p.s. just a reminder that the Shabby Apple Dress Giveaway ends Sunday night!
1 comment:
My daughter, age 5, heartily approves of that. "I want all of them Mom."
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