Try This Tuesday #9: Educational Picture Ring

This week, we are welcoming PsychMamma, who has discovered a great way to extend the use of all those holiday greetings from friends and family!

EDUCATIONAL PICTURE RING
by PsychMamma

Every year we receive a plethora of photo cards and photos when the holiday season rolls around. Jenna loves to look at the pictures and I hate to throw them away, BUT I don't like papering the refrigerator with them, or simply having them loosely floating around. Instead, I decided to do this with them:

The plastic sleeves are simply baseball card covers/protectors. I got a box of them at a shop that sells baseball cards, and they were pretty inexpensive. I used multiple colors of scrapbook paper remnants to mount the pictures on. I punched a hole in one corner of the plastic sleeve and slid them all on a clip ring (available through any office supply store).

Now Jenna has her own portable collection of photos of her friends (and their pets) and family. To make the whole thing a little more "educational," I wrote the names of the colors on the opposite side:

This could easily be changed out with other educational things like numbers, the alphabet, beginning vocabulary words, etc. Use your imagination!

For additional tactile stimulation and interest, you can tie ribbons or multi-textured fabrics onto the ring or thread them through the holes. That was part of my original plan, but I haven't gotten it done yet, and Jenna loves playing with it just the way it is. She calls it her "picture ring." She carries it all over the place and loves to sit down and name everyone, talk about them and then name her colors. Anything to make learning fun….

Please join in and share the creative solutions YOU have found to your own challenges. For more details on how to participate, click here.

Trish can be found writing here at 5MFSN every Friday in addition to hosting Try This Tuesday. You can also find Trish at her blog, Another Piece of the Puzzle.