homemade toys?

**Sara Noel** · 07-09-2007, 10:43 PM

I'm always looking for toys/games to make myself at home for the kids. Toys like using clothespins and an empty milk jug for a clothespin drop game.

What are some frugal homemade toys or games you've made or heard of?

**zakity** · 07-09-2007, 11:41 PM

Pennies and a die (or dice). They roll the dice and add them together and get that many pennies. The biggest pile of pennies (or the most if you keep count) wins (if you need a winner).

**Laurie in Bradenton** · 07-10-2007, 04:14 PM

We had bean bag toss. Mom sewed up bean bags from scrapes of fabric and Dad cut out holes in a piece of scrap plywood. Each hole had a point level.
Dad made a chinese checker board with holes and marbles.
Mom made a bowling game with old bleach bottles and a red rubber ball.
Of course there was always a plastic pail full of large colored caulks for hopscotch, Four Square and other games on the concrete driveway.
Mom used to cut open a brown grocery bag and draw board games on them.

Laurie in Bradenton

**Edna_E** · 07-10-2007, 06:30 PM

Paper dolls - use the cardboard inserts from pantyhose or something similar for the dolls and regular paper for the clothes. Make clothes with basic shapes and let the kids do the coloring. Pretty much endless supply of quiet entertainment!

**AmyMCGS** · 07-11-2007, 09:09 AM

Take a 2 liter pop bottle and fill it partially with rice. Then fill the rest with tiny toys and household items-- paperclips, etc. Glue the lid on. Make a list of everything that's inside. The goal is to turn the bottle around and around until they've found everything that's on the list.

**Dancing Lotus** · 07-11-2007, 09:26 AM

Originally Posted by AmyMCGS

Take a 2 liter pop bottle and fill it partially with rice. Then fill the rest with tiny toys and household items-- paperclips, etc. Glue the lid on. Make a list of everything that's inside. The goal is to turn the bottle around and around until they've found everything that's on the list.

Thats neat. I will save this trick for the next rainy day.

**Dancing Lotus** · 07-11-2007, 09:28 AM

Poor Kitty. Its a game we played as kids. Get a pie tin , every body sits in a cirle and you spin the tin in its side. Who ever it lands closest too has to pretend to be a kitty and the person who spun it has to pet the kitty and say poor kitty. The object is to do it with out laughing.

**MyMelody** · 01-04-2009, 09:45 PM

Make a bunch of overlapping swirls, zigzags, and scribbles on a piece of paper, and have your child use his/her imagination to find pictures and shapes and color them.

A fun thing to do with empty 20 oz. drink bottle is to put in water, baby oil, food coloring, and glitter, beads, buttons (nonmetallic work best), silk flower petals, etc, and then superglue the lid on. We had these in the baby and toddler rooms of the daycare I used to work in.

I've seen people take old stuffed animals, cut the bottom out and remove the stuffing in order to make new handpuppets.

Here's a link I found to a great site with TONS of printable games, dominos, flashcards, bingo, etc., and homemade toys made from recycled materials from around the house:

http://www.first-school.ws/theme/hometoys.htm

**momof2joys** · 01-05-2009, 01:29 AM

Thanks these are really great ideas!!!

**Starlight9803** · 01-05-2009, 05:39 AM

I take empty food boxes (mac and cheese, cereal, pancake mix, etc) and tape them back up with clear packaging tape - the kids use them to play store. They write prices on the packages with a sharpie, use a cheapy calculator and figure things up. They make money out of scrap paper. They actually can learn a lot about budgeting as well.

**Moor** · 01-05-2009, 06:04 AM

1.Take a piece of twine and tie a long nail in the middle of it. Make two of these.
Take two empty two liter bottles or gallon jugs and wash them out.
Put enough sand or cat litter in the bottom to make them stationary.

Have each child hold both ends of the twine in each hand, but to where the nail is hanging behind their backs, between their legs.

The object of the game is to see who gets the nail in the jug first.

2. I made a printable game of dots for the kids. On rainy days, I print out a couple.

3. Each year, my girls get a homemade coloring book. I look for free coloring pages and print them out. Each book has 365 pages in it. I put the pages in a binder for them and the child who brings me their book completed on Dec. 31 get's to pick out a special thing for the family to do that night.

4. Depending on the age group, we play the ABC game. Each person has to name three things that begin with the letter A. Then B and so on. You can't use a word that someone else has used.

5. We took an old fishing rod and made our own fishing game. Let out a little of the line on the rod. Lock it into place. Tis a magnet on the end of the line. Then take paper clips and attach them to shapes that have been cut out of construction paper. I have one for just colors, one for numbers, one for ABC's. Make up all sorts of games to go along with it.

6. I have a rubbermaid box full of paper, glue, paints, colored pencils, crayons, scissors, coloring books, glitter, chalk, and really just about any sort of craft item you can think of. When the kids tell me that they have nothing to do, I point to that and tell them to get to making something. All of the items, I picked up at The Dollar Tree, or at some such place.

7.Make homemade stilts! Take two metal coffee cans. Drill a two holes in the bottom and take a long piece of string, twine. Tie a knot in one end and thread it to the other hole, so that there is a huge loop coming out of the bottom of the can. Tie the other end off, so that both knots are in the can. My kids play for hours with this.

8. Take some of your old clothes, shoes, hats and such and put them in a rubbermaid tub. Then let the kids play with them. I love to take pics of my girls doing this.

9. If you have girls, go through your old makeup. Make them a vanity and let them have at it! My son endured hours of being a model for his little sisters! Of course, they would gang up on him and make him sit there. One time, I found him tied to the chair! LOL

10. Make a printable with Tic Tac Toe. Or hangman. Make up crosswords to go along with something that you are wanting them to work on. Like Mikala is learning to cook. So I made her one about a dish that she wants to learn how to make. I took the ingredients and made hints about them and she had to find them, and then put them in the crossword.

That's all I can think of for right now. My brain is a little frazzled! The kids are going back to school today, and I can't wait!

**Momto2Boyz** · 01-05-2009, 06:58 AM

Years ago my kids were beggin me for a cup and ball game. It was $14.95, and well, I thought that was ridiculous! So, I cut the bottom off of a 2 liter bottle (you could use a 20 ounce soda bottle for older kids) took a piece of ribbon and punched a hole in a pink eraser and tied the ribbon through it and to the cap part of the bottle. Lo and behold...the homemade cup and ball. It kept them busy for hours.

My boys also love to make semi-trucks out of old cardboard pop 12 pack boxes. The can dispenser part makes a great cab, and then if you cut the back part out you can make a bed to put things in. We added cardboard wheels attached to pencils to make axles. They love making these. If we have alot of time, then they get to paint them.

TP tube binoculars are fun too for younger kids.

Cornstarch and water. Mix to make ooze, and then I put it into a cake pan and let them play on an old vinyl table cloth on the kitchen floor. I give them tons of kitchen utensils to play with. It makes a huge mess, but when it dries, it turns back into cornstarch, and sweeps right up!

**Patty A** · 01-05-2009, 10:48 AM

take an old piece of board, drawn a checker board on it and let them paint it. Then take scrap piece of wood and paint to be the moving pieces to a checker board game.

We made bean bags. Hooked a piece of 2x4 to it and hooked empty cans to the pole. They tossed the bean bags in to the cans for points.

Maybe I will date myself with this one, but we always did Chinese jump rope....for those of you that don't know about this one is is easy and keeps the kids happy for hours with just a long piece of elastic!
Here is the instructions..... better than I can explain!
http://www.essortment.com/hobbies/ch...mprop_sxim.htm

One more Cats cradle.
http://www.ifyoulovetoread.com/book/chten_cats1105.htm

Mostly free, easy and fun.

**Ceashels** · 01-05-2009, 09:31 PM

Button on string whirligig
http://www.ehow.com/how_4522728_butt...whirligig.html

I used to play with these on the long trips to PA when I was little. I even made them with card stock instead of buttons and decorated them with markers to make them colorful.

**khjmom** · 01-05-2009, 10:27 PM

The best thing my boys ever had (according to them and this is 10+ years later) was a huge refrigerator box. It was everything from a trian for a few weeks....complete with other boxes roped to the end to a race car...with a steering wheel cut out of cardboard inside. It was a hideout from their sister....and ended up being a clubhouse. We had that one box for months. We just gave them the box and washable markers...they found other things around the house to add to it. The local furniture store would save them for folks..we just had to pick them up.