Giving Toys New Life

7 Comments

For Christmas, my parents gave Penelope & each of her cousins a Melissa & Doug alphabet set. I love it. The primary colors, hidden illustrations  & simple wood letters are adorable! However, Penelope had a really hard time playing with it. Maybe she’s a little young for it, or maybe I just got so annoyed at her chewing & throwing the letters around. Every time we played with the alphabet it was more like a game of 52 card pick up. And I was always the one picking up.

It really is a shame when you have such high hopes for a toy & it completely backfires. For the last little bit I’ve been thinking that perhaps Penelope & I could get more use out of the letters if they were magnets. Last night I picked up a roll of magnetic stripping & spent over an hour sticking little magnets to the backs of each letter. I was really excited to see Penelope’s reaction in the morning.

Her reaction wasn’t so awesome. She kept screaming “I DON’T LIKE IT!” While she picked off every magnet of each letter she got her hands on. It took me another hour to clean up & glue the magnets back on; this time Penelope was “helping”. Now she likes them. I think. I’m pretty sure she’ll have fun playing around with the letters now. If not, I definitely will.

view or add a comment
  • Categories
    1. I have been dying to get some magnet paper to place on the back of pictures of family so that they can be at eye level on the fridge for the little ones! I don’t know if I would have had the patience to re-glue all of those strips…hopefully that is a one time occurrence:)

    2. rofl! Don’t you just love it when you painstakingly do something for your little one and they get hugely angry at you? Kudos to you for fixing them!
      I’ve put magnetic backing on printable paperdolls for my litle girl. It was a huge hit, but if I ever do it again? First laminating it, yikes. lol.

    3. marissa says:

      i so heart this idea! puzzles are so awesome, but the way my kids play and store them is the bane of my existence. this solution is the lick (as rodney would say).

    4. CK says:

      Oh my goodness, this post totally cracked me up! Kids can be so fickle! But I love the toy and I think making them into magnets was ingenious!!!
      -CK

    5. Bellesme says:

      Oooooh harsh, the picture is so cute though. I would make my own magnets by cutting up the really thin ones that companies give out and glued them on things I liked. And OMG I just realized that there are 26 letters, so if there is 2 of each letter, that makes 52 just like a deck of cards! CRAZY! Or does everyone know this already? =P
      Bellesme

    6. I love these magnets. A lot better than the plastic ones…these make the fridge look more stylish:)

    7. Magatha May says:

      You’ve done a great job on making the letters feel like a new toy – maybe she just needs to warm up to playing with them.

      You’ve been tagged for an award over at Magatha May too.

      http://magatha-may.blogspot.com/2011/04/awards-season.html

    mobile site