In the whole collection of busy bags, this activity was the first one I made. I used an old calendar with bright, colorful imagery of animals. I remembered thinking how perfect it was that I saved this old calendar (I somehow predicted I would need these images one day) because Langdon’s mom (her name is Shelli, if I haven’t mentioned that already) is OBSESSED with animals. I knew her love for animals was something she would want to pass down to her son.
You can use any type of pictures you want. If you haven’t got an old calendar, look into magazines - that would be an excellent place to start. I would recommend choosing a collection of objects in the same family or imagery that have the same look so this activity looks cohesive.
These puzzle sticks have an added educational value in that the backside of the sticks have the alphabet written on them. When your kid has learned all the animals, then they can learn their letters. So much learning fun, huh?
PUZZLE STICKS
Ages: 3+
Skill: Learning animals and numbers
Supply List
• Popsicle sticks, colored preferably
• Colored markers (optional if you don’t have colored sticks)
• Colored pictures
• Black Sharpie
• Mod Podge
• X-acto or utility knife
Step-by-Step
PICTURE SIDE
NOTE: Colored popsicle sticks will save you loads of time coloring the sticks. I only had plain ones in my studio, so I opted to use those and had to color them.
1. If you’re using colored sticks, group like colors together. If you have plain sticks, you can skip this step.
2. Lay out your popsicle sticks across the images. Due to the size of my animal pictures, some sticks were laid up/down and some laid left/right. Give your pictures their own set of colors as it will be easier to group the puzzles together when they’re taken apart and thrown about. (You know your kid is going to go bananas throwing these sticks around!)
3. With the pictures in tact, glue down the sticks to the back side of the images with Mod Podge. Make sure you use enough glue to get the pictures to adhere well.
TIP: Mod Podge dries out fast, so apply enough glue for one stick at a time. (I made the mistake of applying glue to all the sticks first and they dried up before I could adhere them to paper. It was more work to reglue. So please learn from my mistake!)
4. When your pictures are all glued down and the glue has dried, carefully slice apart the images along the breaks in the sticks. Since I am a semi-perfectionist and giving these sticks as a gift, I made sure to trim off any excess paper from each stick. I think this is worth the effort or else your babe will peel off your hard work!
5. If you have been working with plain sticks, this is a good time to color the backs of them. Make sure to keep your puzzles together so you color each one the same color. Colored stick people can skip this step!
6. Then seal in the images with a top coating of Mod Podge. I liked to brush the glue around the edges, but not the back side of the sticks. This step just provides added protection to the pictures.
ALPHABET SIDE
7. On the colored side of the sticks, write in the upper and lower cases of the alphabet. (One letter per stick.)
How To Play
For the picture side, have your child rearrange the shapes and colors to recreate the original picture. For the letters side, have your child match up the lower case letters to the upper case ones.
Here are all the puzzles I’ve made with the animal pictures. The names were handwritten by me. I didn’t exactly know how to label the chameleon. I’ll let the mother decide how to best teach this one to Langdon. Haha.
Some day, little Langdon will be able to put these puzzles together himself! Till then, he’ll just busy himself with those pom poms!
I’ve linked up this project at these parties here.
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