Preschool Activity: Homemade Puzzles

Most days Gracie and I do school while Nate and Amaryllis are taking their afternoon naps. So far, this has worked great, but I do have a backup plan. I have a basket of preschool activities that Amaryllis can do independently if she should wake up before we are finished. So far I have only had to use them a handful of times, but as she gets older that might begin to change.

I keep the basket with our other school materials and away from the toys so it feels more like school for Amaryllis. They are also reserved only for school time, so they maintain a sense of novelty, although I've made a few exceptions since she hardly ever needs to use them during school time!

One activity I have is some homemade puzzles. To make the puzzles I cut interesting pictures out of magazines, glued them onto some card stock from my scrapbooking supplies, and cut them into interesting shapes. My reason for putting the card stock on the back was to make the pictures thicker and little more durable and to keep the separate puzzles distinct (I used a different color of card stock on each picture), but it also makes a good color sorting activity! It took a three-year-old to figure that one out!

To store, I put each puzzle into its own sandwich-sized Ziploc bag and all the small bags go into a gallon-sized Ziploc and then into the activity basket. Most of the activities are in gallon Ziploc, and I have the rule of one bag a at a time in order to keep things under control. At least that's my plan!

I'll be sharing more of my preschool activity bags in future, so stay posted!