COLORFUL THINGS KIT

Posted on October 11, 2014

I’ll just admit it… Mya’s not too good with her colors. Everything was “boo” and now it’s “yeh-woh.” So in the effort to not feel like I’m failing as a parent, we made a color kit. (We also made one for her friend Paiy, which you’ll see in some of the pictures below.) It was super easy and inexpensive (under $10) to make.

WHAT YOU NEED + WHAT TO DO
(1) clear tackle box: We got ours at Michaels for $5. There are other size options, but we picked one that would be reasonable to take on road trips or out to dinner.

Assortment of colorful things: For Paiy’s gift, we went shopping at Party City and Mya had a grand ol’ time filling her basket with little things. (I slyly removed most of them and returned them to their original bins, but we kept what was needed!) For Mya’s color kit, we got a few new little items, but otherwise, we just found little toys around the house and used those. When we collected everything, Mya definitely liked dumping it all out on the floor to assess the loot. (And her current catchphrase to when she’s being ornery is “Gotchaaaa!”)

Colored paper: Depending on how many compartments you want to create, it is up to you what and how many colors to get. I already had some scrapbook paper, and the weight of it seemed to work nicely.

Poster board: I used this as the base for taping down the colored paper.

Tools (Exacto knife, Straight edge, Pencil, Double-sided Tape, Painters’ Tape): I would do this part of the project AfterTheKidsGoToBed (<– did you see what I did there?!) I removed the dividers, placed

1. Remove all dividers from tackle box.
2. Cut a piece of poster board to fit snugly at the bottom of the tackle box.
3. Depending on how your tackle box is made, you may need to cut slits where the dividers snap into place. Use a pencil to mark where the dividers will need to descend into place.
4. With straight edge and exacto knife, cut out voids for divider fasteners.
5. Attach the dividers into the tackle box to plan how many colored cells are desired. (For Paiy’s we included two more cells (silver and gold), but for Mya’s, I just made 12 (white, green, purple, red, pink, lavender, grey, blue, orange, black, yellow, and brown).
6. Cut-out your colored paper pieces to fit within each individual box. And use double-sided tape to tape down the colored pieces to poster board.
7. Place colored base into tackle box.
8. Secure dividers to reveal your colorful things box!

9. To make a super easy and quick label, draw whatever design on poster board and cut it out. Mya helped me make one for her friend Paiy: She instructed to draw a “happee sour” (translation: “happy flower”), so that’s the glorious image depicted in the middle. (If I hadn’t been making this little project alongside a two year old, I might have gotten a bit more crafty with the label, but I loved that Mya wanted to be a part of it.)
10. To attach the label to the box’s top, take a few strips of painters’ tape (I had green on-hand) and cover the back of the label. Then trim the excess, leaving a 1/2 inch border around the label. This allows you to secure the label on the inside of the box and creates a nice colorful border viewed from the outside.

Mya’s had her colorful things kit for a couple days. She’s pretty sharp at placing each colorful object in it’s respective compartment. But I can’t quite claim she’s over her “boo” and “yeh-woh” phase yet.

Recently, Mya has been quite bossy– yikes. (I certainly don’t know where she gets that trait– oops!) She usually follows-up her direction with a “please.” But she’s bossy, nonetheless. Here she’s instructing me to run up a hill and collect all the walnuts that have fallen in our yard.