Playing with our children doesn’t have to be all about toys and store brought craft materials. There are so many items that we use around the house that can be incorporated into play. Things that are considered as ‘junk’, we can recycle for our children to play and craft with it.  When you have little children in the household, entertaining them and keeping them busy can get really challenging and expensive so recycling and repurposing, is always a good idea. What’s more, you are teaching your children valuable life skills along the way! Best Toys 4 Toddlers has a two month long 60 Days of Junk Play Challenge this year to explore all the ways we can incorporate junk material in to play.  We are happy to talk about old calendars today.

 

 

We love old calendars. Most of us have last year’s calendars lying around and it doesn’t matter what kind you have because, all of these can be used in such creative ways. We have already talked about making cute clip on bookmarks last month. You can craft with the card, use the pictures in frames or use the numbers to play games. Our favorite way to play with calendars however, is to turn them into puzzles. There are quite a few different types that we have experimented with and today we are going to show you just how to make super simple puzzles from old calendars.

Super Simple Puzzles From Old Calendar

 

 

What you need:

A Calendar and a pair of scissors. You can either use just part of an old calendar or you can use all of it.

Jigsaw Puzzle:

Cut a photo off the calendar. On the back side, you can either mark rough lines for you to cut or just grab a scissor and get the job done without any aid. You can cut this kind of puzzle in to either squares, triangles, abstract or if you have a puzzle cutter, use that.

Flip Card Puzzles.

You will need a flip desk calendar for this. Cut each page into wide strips all the way to the binding. Make sure that all the strips are the same width and can flip easily. Turn a few randomly and you have a jumbled picture for your child.

 

Lock and key Puzzle.

Take a picture and draw a shape right in the middle. Cut the shape up half way making sure there is a part that is projecting out to fit in the other half.

Shape Puzzles:

The simplest way to make a puzzle is to just cut the shapes into squares and triangles and let the toddler recognize shapes as they sort.

 

You can check out the entire list of ideas for more #JunkPlay materials by clicking on the photo below.