DIY Activity Board!

Hello friends! I am super proud of myself and I cannot wait to show you what I made today! On Friday we went over to my best friends father and step-mothers house. They have a little girl that is the same age as Emelia (almost 2) and she is such a smart little girl! I was shown to her room to change both my little ones diapers and also to use their rocker when I needed to feed Eli. I saw that they had one of those magnetic boards and on it shown flash cards to help Audrey (best friends little sister) learn. I thought oh my gosh that is such a great idea! Also a friend of mine named Hope has a blog and on it she put up a post about a responsibility chart. Here is the link to that: A Responsibility Chart for Toddlers/Preschoolers.

So I decided to put them together and make an activity board for my kiddos. I had an old cookie sheet that was just in my craft tote so I decided to use that since it is magnetic and make my own! Here is what I used/am going to use for my activity board:

I have a ton of newspapers since I am a beginning coupon-er so I decided to recycle that for our activity board. I decided to take the newspaper and rip it up to fit on the cookie sheet and I started to take just regular Elmer's glue and glue it on. At first I did it the hard way and watered down the glue, applied it to the cookie sheet with a foam brush, put the paper on, made sure it was bubble-free, then I put more watered down glue on top. I did that until it was done and I let it dry. I found out when it dried the paper just came off so I decided to just put plain ol' glue on the sheet, use the brush to make a good layer across the cookie sheet, and then re-applied the paper. That worked out a lot better and the paper stuck. So here is what that process looked like:

When I had the layer of newspaper down I printed off the kids name on a piece of paper and applied that. After I did that I had to find a way to hang it up. I looked through my craft tote and of course I didn't have any ribbon or any twine in there! So after thinking a little I decided to roll up some newspaper and use that. I took a sheet of newspaper and split it in half. Like so:

Then after that I rolled up each of the half and in the end I had three rolled-up pieces. I started at one end of the newspaper and rolled it as tightly as possible. It took a couple tries with each sheet. Here is what that looked like:

After I had my three rolled up pieces I taped one end of them to a table and just braided it. I braided it as tightly as I could and then I rolled up the ends and hot glued them. This is what my braid looks like:

I know, my picture was blurry. I'm sorry. I hot glued it to the back of the cookie sheet like this:

It was all ready to hang up! I really liked what the outer lip of the cookie sheet looked like so I didn't do anything to it. If you don't like yours though you can paint it. A bright color might look really cool on the outer lip. I, however, liked the older antique look so I just kept it how it is. I got flash cards and magnetic clips from the dollar store to put on there. Here is what the finished product looks like:

I also am eventually going to make a chore chart for Bridgette and a potty chart for Emelia (and later Eli) to clip up on it. I put on the blank piece of paper to show where I would put that. I have a ton of foam stickers so once I get some magnets I am going to put them on to mark how well they are doing. I wish I saved all the flat magnets (you know, the type that are mostly used at business cards) that I didn't have use for but I just threw them away. I could have recycled them! I guess you live, you learn! Well, there you have it. My proud little DIY project. Are you going to try it? I would love to see what you guys come up with. You can email me your little creations and I will add them to the bottom of this post!