Way back when Ophelia was first starting to keep me company and play with some toys while I was working in the kitchen, I decided we needed some fun fridge magnets for her to play with. She wasn't old enough to handle the ubiquitous small ABC magnets. And I couldn't see the point of spending money on something plastic that was likely going to get lost as Phee got bigger and started carrying toys throughout the house. Or discovered how to open the trashcan.My solution to everything- make something. I made Phee a set of food magnets using common foods she was eating at the time.
She would push the magnets around the fridge door. Or pull them all off and crawl away. As she got older, she would pick a few off, put them into a pot and "cook" with them. I still pull pots out and find them full of food magnets from time to time. Now that she has her own play kitchen, I find the magnets in her little pots and pans, too.
This is a fully customizable and fixable project. I've had to remake the magnets once, after Phee went through her "I'm folding up everything that looks like paper" phase. At that point, I adjusted the repertoire of magnets to include some new and more colorful foods.
Materials
- cardstock
- color printer
- laminate & laminator or packing tape
- magnet rolls
- Print out pictures of whatever you like on white cardstock.
- Cut them out.
- Write the word for the picture on the back.
- Laminate or use clear packing tape to completely cover the image and cut it out.
- Stick a small piece of adhesive magnet on the back.
- Put them on the fridge and let your kiddos' imaginations run wild!
Your set of fridge magnets could be any sort of theme:
- sky- moon, stars, clouds, birds, planes
- road- cars, trucks, sections of road
- farm- animals, barn, farmer, little plots of planted field
- ocean- fish, coral, boats
- shapes
- characters they love from a show or books
- animals of any kind- rainforest, farm, zoo, insects
