My Toddler Never Sits Still

The grocery store, a restaurant, the craft store, the pool where my son, Gavin has swim lessons, what do these all have in common?  They are places where my daughter becomes a hand full of energy as she dramatically tries to escape her seat.  Unless I have an entire bag of Goldfish crackers, it’s a battle.  At one of Gavin’s recent swim lessons, I pulled out a stack of memory game cards that I keep in my purse for Gavin, and gave them my two-year-old daughter, Victoria.  She loved them and it had her entertained, until I had to put them away.    The paper weight was too thin, so she was bending them and the cards were too big for her to handle, so she was dropping them all over the wet floor.

This past weekend I was at Lowe’s with my family.  Victoria and I explored the paint chip section.  She thought that section was the best part of the store!  So, I let her take some home and I decided to make her a set of five mini flash cards out of the paint chips.  They are  a perfect size for her little hands and for keeping in my purse. Of course I had to sprinkle a bit of Disney on them!

Here’s how I made them.

1. Gather supplies: white heavy weight card stock; 10 paint chips (2 of each color), glue stick, scissors or a paper-cutter, Mickey Mouse craft punch, hole puncher, and a piece of ribbon.
2. Trim one of each different color paint chips down to 3″ x 2.5″.  This will take off the descriptive words on the paint chips.  Also cut down the white card stock to 3″ x 2.5″.  Use the remaining duplicate colored paint chips to make your Mickey Mouse craft punches for each flash card.
3. Glue the heavy weight white card stock to the back of the paint chip.  This side will be your “counting” side of each card.  Glue the Mickey craft punches to each card.
4. I used the rainbow to decide the order, one Mickey for red, two Mickeys for orange, three Mickeys for yellow, four Mickeys for green and five Mickeys for blue.
5. On the color side of the card use a Sharpie to write the corresponding number.
6. Last, hole punch the corner of each card and string ribbon to connect them all.  Now they’re ready for your toddlers next adventure in the store!

Easy as 1,2,3…4 and 5!