We've suddenly been big on puzzles around here. For Valentine's Day we created a treasure hunt for the kids where they ended up with a joint family gift: a puzzle. Then the real gift was to spend time together doing the puzzle. It's fun to step it up a notch and hit the larger pieced puzzles too... except that The Toddler's favourite puzzles seem to be the 100 piecers when he is really on a 24 piece level. Puzzles are also great to occupy kids who are too sick to go to school, but not sick enough to lay in bed. I am not the greatest at puzzles, and will be the first to admit it. But it gets me down on the floor with the kids and that's enjoyable.
I do love a good organizing project, however, and a few years ago I was sick of all the puzzle boxes and the constant puzzle box repair and decided to abandon the boxes all together. Instead I used ziplock bags to store the pieces and also cut out the picture of the puzzle from the boxes to store inside as well. For easy clean-up I labeled the bags with the puzzle and piece number. Not too long ago, when Little E took his five year old trip he brought home a new puzzle from my Mom. I had to laugh when I saw she had already put the pieces into a ziplock bag for me... no box anywhere! Can you believe how little space all these puzzles now take? There are 12 in this one little bin.
You may recall a few Christmases ago when Mr. Man and his Dad designed and built a whole set of building blocks for the kids. It has seriously been the most well-loved and used set of toys in this house. Neighborhood kids adore them, and our kids run to them first thing every morning. Little E has become quite the architect and I need to start taking more pictures of his amazing designs and "castles."
This picture only came to be because I HAD to vacuum and we compromised with me taking a picture before he destroyed his masterpiece so that he could easily re-create it. His next design was even taller and more immaculate! I love that these can be enjoyed by all: from the nine year old princess down to the two year old trouble maker. The best storage solution for this has been our old entertainment unit (now used for toys) from Ikea with the sliding storage drawer.
We have two spring birthdays coming up and I've been after the birthday boys to cough up some items for their wish list. The cowboy really wants Woody sheets, but other than that all they want is Lego. I seem to recall the same wish list for the last few birthdays... and I'm wondering how long this will last and if I should take out stock in Lego!
3 comments:
I know of another idea that many daycares and schools do for puzzles, too. Label the back of each piece with a number so that the "Spiderman" puzzle pieces are all labeled 7, for example. That way, if you ever find a random piece under the couch, you don't have to stare at the image forever trying to figure out which puzzle it belongs to. It seriously saves us hours of headaches just by tagging each piece of the puzzle with the puzzle number (or sometimes a shape, letter, etc.) Just a thought!
We just went through every single puzzle and put them into baggies. (FYI-we are huge puzzle fans, so there were over 50 puzzles ranging from 24 to 1000 piece variety.) You were right...the space savings is incredible! Thanks for sharing.
I love the puzzle idea! You have such great organizational ideas! Legos are the big hit here also. Target has starwars legos in the easter section that are 3.50 a ship. We did it one night for FHE. Boys loved it, thought you would like to know! Good talking to you the other day!
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