Scrabble Coasters - Great Gifts for Any Occassion

I have seen the Scrabble coasters on Pinterest and I thought it would be a great gift for someone for a wedding. I found that I liked the size better of a 5x5 tile coaster. I had just seen them with 4 letter words. So, I came up with some "wedding" words and made a set of six for a friend of mine who is getting married. I had my husband cut small squares out of thin board to glue the tiles on. I painted the backs of them black.

The words I used for the wedding tiles were:

• their names, first, last, their kids' names
• date and year of the wedding, bride, groom, loved
• share, kiss, talk, relax, often
• boy, meets, girl, the, end
• happy, cozy, ours, heart, home
• toast, laugh, dance, smile, dream

(for the words that weren't five letters, I just used a blank one or turned a letter tile over).

I loved the way these turned out that I made a set for my sister because they just moved into their new house.

The words I used for the new house were:

•  party, times, games, food, drink
• paint, blood, sweat, tears, house (they built a lot of their house themselves so that is where these words came from)
• plant, grow, weeds, trees, path
• home, cozy, quiet, place, woods
• relax, enjoy, toast, dream, laugh
• I then used their last name, zip code, town they live in and state

I will be making these again. I think they are a great handmade gift that can be personalized for any occasion! Happy Tiling!

DIY - Turn Plant Stand into Scrabble Wall Tiles

I found this plant stand on the side of the road. I picked it up because I instantly saw the wood shelves as Scrabble wall tiles. It took me awhile to figure out a four letter word to use, but when the word NEST came to mind, I knew it was perfect. I used my Cricut to cut out the letters and numbers and used them as stencils. My husband put the picture hangers on the back. We hung this in our three seasons porch and I love it!

Easy and cheap DIY project!!

Valentine Scrabble Messages!

I made these for Christmas this year (I blogged those as well) and thought they would be cute for Valentine's Day this year. I painted the stands pink and red and glued the letters on to make cute sayings for Valentine's Day. Some of the words I put on there were: Valentines, We (heart) You, Feb. 14, Yummy (I am going to put this on the Valentines cookies we hand out), XOXOXOXOXOXO. I put little hooks on the sides of each one (my husband just drilled little holes and the hooks just screw right in) so I can tie them easily onto gifts and or cookie trays. There are millions of things you could say with these! Fun little addition to any gift or just a decoration for your desk. Cute way to send a message this Valentine's Day!!!

Halloween Word Find

My son is in first grade and he has been bringing home word finds that he has done and he also has spelling tests every week. When I was asked to come up with some games for his classroom Halloween party, one of them that I thought would be fun, and appropriate, was a "Halloween Word Find". I used my Cricut to cut out the letters to "Happy Halloween". I glued them onto square sheets of paper. I laminated them as well so they would hold up and could be used over and over. When I got to the classroom, I hid these square, letter cards all around the room. The kids had to find all the letters and work together to put the "saying" together. Out of all the games we played, this was the most popular. Kids love to find things and then it was even fun to work as a team to get the words together. They were all sounding out the letters and working together to get the task done. They asked if we could do it again after they finished it. This game could be adapted to any party, any theme, any holiday! Have fun!

Monkey Munch Game!

This game was a huge hit with my kids this summer and it was so simple to make! I wanted to come up with a fun game that incorporated letter sounds and "Monkey Munch" is what I came up with. To make the monkey, I took an empty cereal box and wrapped it with brown construction paper. I cut out a half circle at the bottom of the box for his mouth. I used a lighter brown paper for the eyes, ears and bottom portion of the monkey's face. For the ears, I cut out the circular part of the ears, but I left a longer "tab" at the base of the ear so I could use that to glue to the side of the box. This enabled the ears to stick out. The eyes are just 2 circles - a bigger circle cut from the lighter brown paper and then a smaller one cut from white paper is glued on that. Then, I just colored in the black pupils. I glued all of these pieces on using a hot glue gun. The nose of the monkey was not glued because that gave me the perfect place to set my alphabet flashcard (see the top picture).

How to Play "Monkey Munch": Each day, put a different letter flashcard on the monkey's nose and then say, "Monkey Munch Time!" The kids see what letter is on the monkey and then they have to go around the house and find things that start with that letter. Once they find something, they put it in the monkey's mouth (so he can munch on them). If the item was too big, I just had the kids set it next to the monkey. So, for instance, if "F" is the letter, they could feed the monkey a frog, food, fruit, flower, fox, etc. Once they were done looking, we would all sit down and I would take each thing out of his mouth and the kids would tell me what they were. I would repeat what they said with emphasis on the letter sound at the beginning of each word.

There was not one day this summer that my kids didn't ask me, "When are we doing 'Monkey Munch'?" or "What letter will be on 'Monkey Munch'?" I loved this game because they were learning the entire time, but had no idea because they were having so much fun! A win-win situation!