Homemade Felt Horse *

     My daughter loves all things horses. As I was going through old emails to clean out my newsletter folder (yikes!) I found an email showing an activity involving sewing buttons on a felt pillow for children to practice doing buttons. Now I feel it is very valuable for children to learn tasks like that, but I think it's a bit silly to waste materials when you can just give them a button up shirt on a hanger and let them practice. My daughter learned how to use buttons by doing it herself on her clothing. She's gotten faster at in in time and I saved on materials. I like some of the Montessori concepts, but some of them can be accomplished with items already in the home. For the green me that is super important because I don't like to waste things. So I decided just to make her a felt animal, and horse was the first option that came to mind. I found a picture of a horse online with a good body shape for tracing, printed out the picture and then cut out the horse.

    Next up I asked my daughter what colors she wanted her horse. She chose pink for one side and yellow for the other. So I laid my horse paper on the pink felt and traced it with the head facing right (I took the picture above before switching it around), and then traced it on the yellow paper with the head facing left. This way I could put the sides with ink on them from tracing facing each other on the inside.

    After I had traced the horse on each piece of felt I cut them out. I put them together with the inked side facing in and trimmed any areas I needed to so they would match almost perfectly.

     I picked out green and yellow thread, my daughter's two favorite colors, and did a little of each while sewing the horse up. I didn't do anything fancy, and I sewed it all by hand. I prefer to sew some of her projects that way because I enjoy sitting down and spending time relaxing while I sew. She sat next to me doing school work - domestic bliss!

     Since I didn't have any fluff on hand for stuff the horse, I improvised. I took some old sock and cut them into strips and squares to use for stuffing. It didn't really need to be super soft since she's going to play pretend with it more that cuddle with it. I used two of the ankle socks for women. They worked out nicely and I love reusing things!

    There were smaller areas such as the legs that were easier to stuff as I sewed, that way I wasn't trying to fill them from one top opening. So I stuffed the legs and then sewed the tail, and I stuffed that as I sewed as well. And as I sewed up the back I stuffed the horses bottom and stomach. This just made it easier since I wasn't using something like fluff, which is much more pliable.

     This is the pink side of her horse, fully stuffed and all sewed up! She absolutely loved it! :) I think my daughter prefers the toys I make her and her wooden toys over anything else. The yarn dolls I made for her get lots of use still.

     And this is the yellow side of the horse. I love how it turned out honestly, and it really wasn't that hard. You just need two paper size pieces of felt, scissors, thread, a needle, stuffing and a print out of the animal shape you want to do. She's already asked me to make her more animals so I'm looking forward to that! :)

Homemade Piggy Bank For Saving, Spending, Giving & Investing

     So in my search for fun learning tools for my daughter, I stumbled across a bank that has compartments for saving, spending, giving, and investing. What a neat idea! Sadly they are plastic, which is not worth the risk in chemicals or toxicity. So I decided to make my own for her. :) The nice thing about items you make yourself is you can customize them as you like. All you  need it a container like a box, scissors, a razor blade, tape, paper to decorate it, a couple pieces of velcro and permanent markers to label it.

     I decided to make ours out of a box I had saved which was a good size. So we ended up with four compartments, though I'm not sure how change a child saves can be used for investing... I started off with a box that I cut with two pieces that open on the top to get access to the money when needed. I used clear packing tape to keep the sides together as I needed.

     Next I took some of the extra pieces of cardboard and cut strips to go inside to separate compartments. Again, I used tape to help secure them where needed - to each other and to the sides and bottom of the box.

         Now comes the fun of customizing! My daughter loves horses so I took a horse calender she had that got ripped down and used some of the pictures for decorating the sides of her box. I simply cut them to fit and taped them on with clear tape. I covered all of each picture with tape to keep it from getting damaged by being ripped or getting wet. Contact paper just does't stick as well for me.

     Now for the two top flaps I left to open and close to access the money, I decided to use a piece of my daughter's art work for a personalized touch. Again, I cut the paper to size and was able to use just one paper for both flaps. And again, I covered them in clear tape.

     Next I took a razor blade and cut four slots in the flaps over each compartment I made. It was much easier and quicker than using scissors, and I trimmed off any excess cardboard with scissors when done.

     To keep the two flaps closed, I cut a small but thick piece of cardboard and covered it with another small piece of her artwork left over. I covered in it tape, and then added two pieces of velcro to each side on the bottom. Then I put it in the middle of the box, evenly in the middle of each flap. This way the velcro provides easy access when needed.

     And lastly, I took four different colored permanent markers and let my daughter decide which slot would be for which, and then labelled them as such. We spent our afternoon counting money, putting what we could in rolls, and separating it into the different sections. My daughter has such a giving heart so most of it went into the giving slot for her to send to help save wild cheetahs. :)

     This is a very simple and reasonably quick project, and it's so much cheaper than buying a pre-made bank, which seem to start at $30 and up! If you make one for your child, let me know how it goes and what you used! :)