Making activities from recycled materials

I’m forever seeing fancy toddler activities all over Pinterest and Instagram, which are amazing to look at, but in reality, I rarely have the time or energy to set up something elaborate for my twins. Instead, I often find myself making simple activities from things I have in the house – this week I’ve managed to recycle lots too!

The Joy of Sensory Puzzles

Sensory puzzles can be as simple or complex as you want, and all you need to create them is a glue gun and some cardboard. I bought a tiny £5 glue gun many years ago which is still going strong, and I usually have a couple of cardboard boxes waiting to go into the recycling. 

Draw a simple shape onto a cardboard base, and then glue strips of cardboard along your shape outline, making sure there are no gaps. Once you’ve done that, you can leave it simple, or add more sections to make the puzzle harder! At the moment, I like to leave mine simple for my twins, but I’ll make things harder for them with more sections as they get older. 

To play, just add something that your child needs to transfer into the puzzle – this could be anything from dried pasta, coloured rice, wooden pieces (we use Grapat sometimes), or beads. For some added skills practice, add a scoop to use. The more complex the puzzle, the more different things you could add to put into the puzzle sections!

Today, in the spirit of spooky season, I have made a really simple ghost outline. I’ve managed to add a fun sensory aspect too by using some left over potato starch packing peanuts as the filling. It’s worked really well, I’ve only used recycled materials, and I’m sure the twins are going to have lots of fun putting the packing peanuts in the puzzle!