Magnet board

I don't know about your kids, but mine LOVE to play with magnets on the fridge. They spend so much time reorganizing magnets and pushing them off the fridge and onto the floor. We have those alphabet letters, you know, the ones everyone has. So when my kids decide to take all the magnets off the fridge and put them on the floor, it makes a mess all over the kitchen (although not really that high up there on the list of annoying messes that are usually on my floor).

I saw this idea for making an alphabet board for your kids. I thought it might clear up some mess in my kitchen if I put one in each of my daughter's bedrooms.

To begin with, I sent my husband out to Autozone to buy some oil drip pans. Turns out they are $9.99 each which is a great price for a magnet board that's bigger than my kids are.

Next I cleaned them with Simple Green. The oil drip pans come with a film on them that's kind of greasy/oily.

I decided to paint the drip pans the colors of my kids rooms. This was just a style choice. They could be really cute if they are left as just a metal color depending on where you put them in your house but I didn't want it to look like we pulled a piece of junk metal out of the garage and attached it to my kids' bedroom wall. So I painted them with left over paint from when we painted the inside of our house.

I had intended on painting them with a lot more detail and design to make them really nice but I decided it probably wasn't worth the time. My kids don't care and the boards are probably going to be covered with magnets most of the time anyway. I was also concerned about how long the paint was going to last on the drip pans (scratching, etc.)



I hung them on the wall with 3M picture hanging strips (appx. $6.50 per package).

As a warning, this mostly worked. If I had used an entire package of them on one board they probably would have stuck better. Both boards have fallen off the wall since I hung them up. Luckily you can just stick them right back up if they fall. I have also bought more 3M picture hanging strips to fix the problem.

My two year old really likes having these boards in the bedrooms.

To add to the fun of these new magnet boards, I made some magnets to go along with them.

I bought some magnet strips to add to the back of pictures I printed from the computer then laminated. The magnets were about a dollar a package at Walmart. I selected the strips so they would be big enough that if they came off the pictures, my 9 month old wouldn't choke on them.

Here's what I ended up with:

If you notice, there is an owl and a star magnet that I made. This is from a YouTube Twinkle Twinkle Little Star video that can be seen here. It's my two year old's favorite video. She watches it over and over and over. It was also the inspiration behind the name of this blog. The makers of the Twinkle Twinkle little star video also have a Hickory Dickory Dock video. I made magnets of the clock and each of the animals in the song that ran up the clock.

I picked up the alphabet cards shown in the picture at the dollar store. Again, I just laminated them and put a magnet on the back of each one.

On my list of future projects is to make some Yo Gabba Gabba! magnets. I may be trying to get my husband to dress up like DJ Lance Rock for Halloween this year too. If that happens, there will definitely be pictures.

Jenn