Felt is a super easy and versatile material to use. Even if you are not a master seamstress you can still make really neat and engaging activities using felt for your little ones.
For the most part felt sticks to itself. It's kind of like a less sticky velcro because it tends to cling to itself allowing you to do all different kinds of activities.
Either use a large piece of felt or take several sheets to make a felt board. You can simply hot glue them to a large piece of recycled cardboard from your recycling bin or buy a thick craft board from the dollar store.
I use a smaller felt learning area that I glued directly to this tri-fold school board. We use this during our little school lessons and my daughter loves it.
Another fun option is to make a compact and portable city out of felt. Your kids will love building their own little town and customizing it to be their own special creation. This doesn't have to be all that fancy either because kids can use their own imagination and really kick this activity up a notch. Best of all you do not need to do any sewing to make this activity set! I do recommend investing in a good pair of fabric scissors which will make cutting the felt way more easy which you could always pick up from a craft store.
To make the roads simply take a sheet of gray felt and cut it into four equal strips. I cut about three sheets to make sure we have plenty of roads to work with. For the corners and connector pieces cut a few squares and rounded pieces for turns. Then using a simple sharpie draw some dashes on them to create street lines.
If you want to get a little more complex you can even use your scissor skills to make some railroad pieces.
For the ground pieces there are a few different things you can make. Take full pieces of brown and round the corners to make dirt or mud patches. Make water with full blue pieces and use a sharpie to draw simple waves on it. You can also use large sheets of green for grassy areas.
I generally like to leave most of the pieces unglued so my daughter can have fun being completely creative with building and customizing her town but you can also glue them together. Take a few pieces of felt in different colors and cut them into large squares or rectangles. Now cut out some simple triangle and trapezoid shapes for the roofs, cut smaller squares and rectangles for windows and doors.
Add a couple of toy cars, figures or animals to complete your town. When you have all of your pieces it's time to find a large plastic pocket, a box or container to store everything in.
In the past we used just an old cardboard shoe box but have recently upgraded to a small plastic bin from the dollar store. It doesn't take up much room at all and is so easy to take with us as a light and portable toy for the kids.
Below are some pictures of what our city looks like. We just pulled out some of the basic pieces but again you can add as many elements as you want. I do recommend playing this activity on carpet or a rug if possible so the pieces do not slide around too much.
We did add a small parking lot with large numbers so we can add some counting practice to this toy. My youngest is starting to count and absolutely loves parking the cars on the different numbers. If you are working on shapes or even sight words you can put those on the parking spaces instead of numbers to help your little one learn.
Did you make this activity kit for your children? If so what type of buildings and pieces did you create? Leave a comment below and don't forget to subscribe for more simple craft and activity ideas.
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