Magnetic Letters

In our quest to better reading I spend a lot of time with the Princesses on spelling. King Daddy and I were given a game called Bananagrams. I don't know if you've seen it but it's like Scrabble without the scoring. I took it out one day to play, slightly modified, with Princess Big. She loved it and is constantly asking to play with it. Well, King Daddy and I also love to play it so I didn't want any of the pieces lost. That means the Princesses didn't get to play with it as often as they wanted :( That just fueled my creative juices and I made one for them with a few modifications. Here's how I did it.

I used left over art board from the lacing cards I made for Prince T back in October. I made grid of .75 inch squares and cut them out. This time I used a box cutter instead of my X-Acto knife and what a difference it made! According to the Bananagrams game I needed 144 tiles: A=13, B=3, C=3, D=6, E=18, F=3, G=4, H=3, I=12, J=2, K=2, L=5, M=3, N=8, O=11, P=3, Q=2, R=9, S=6, T=9, U=6, V=3, W=3, X=2, Y=3, Z=2

I took some time in deciding how to color the squares. I couldn't just leave them white, what kind of crafter would I be! I decided to go with covering them. I thought it would be easier than trying to paint them. I happened to have this 1.5 inch square hole punch so I took it to sheets of 12" x 12" scrapbook paper. I did the vowels (60) in one color, pink, and the consonants (84) in another, blue.

Next, I pulled out the Mod Podge and glued the art board in the center of the paper square.

Then, I glued the sides down. I'm not going to lie to you, the process was long and tedious!

Once the Mod Podge was dry I wrote the letters on each tile with a paint pen (I bet a sharpie would work just as well).

Next, I applied the Mod Podge as a sealer. I tried this method where I stuck a thumb tack in and "painted" the sides and top. I thought I would be able to let it dry while sitting on top of the tack. Didn't work. First, sometimes the tile would begin to rotate on the tack and then fall off. If I was able to complete the sealing and get it standing up right one of the children (that includes King Daddy) would bump the table and they would fall down. I finally gave up and just painted them in my hand and then laid them down on a piece of wax paper. Once the tops were dry I sealed the bottoms with a layer of Mod Podge. I probably should have done 2 coats but to be honest this part was also long and tedious and I just couldn't do it!

The last step on the tiles was to put magnets on them. I got this roll of magnetic tape and just cut it into squares. Then, I removed the backing and just stuck it to the center of the back. I'm not sure how that's going to stand up to a 3.5 and 5 year old but if they come off I'll just try gluing them back on.

Of course we had to have something to carry the tiles in. Bananagrams comes in this little yellow pouch that looks like a banana. I whipped this one up out of some scrap fabric that I had and a zipper that I got when my grandmother died and is probably older than I am.

Finally, I pulled out a magnetic dry erase board that was just sitting in a closet (I think it originally came from Target). Here are the Princesses making words. They were so excited that I got about 30 minutes of quiet while they worked! It's wonderful to watch them sound out words while spelling. Princess Big is also fabulous with helping Princess Little with the words she wants to spell.