Wow. Its been a while. I’ve been completely out of it the past couple of months. BUT summer is here and the big boy is home with me until September. Of course this means I have to find ways to entertain the big boy (and little boy) every day for the next 3 months. Yikes. But, I’m not too worried, I have a few tricks up my sleeve. :)
My son is obsessed with the game “Angry Birds”. He loves playing it on my phone and every time he sees something angry birds at the store he always begs me to get it for him. I’ve thought about it too, but those angry bird paraphernalia can be super spendy and frankly they look like junk. Nothing that would keep his attention for too long. So, I came up with my own “Angry Bird” game for him and the lil’ brother to play using items I bought at the Dollar Store. I’m decently happy with the way it all turned out and Peyton is having a blast with it! Heres what I did:
Cost: About $16
Supplies: All found at the Dollar Store
- 1 red ball. The one I found was foam.
- A packet of colored felt.
- A packet of googly eyes.
- 1 green pool noodle.
- 9 rectangular plastic planters. I purposely tried to find the “wood” colored ones.
- 1 rubber placemat. Like the rug pads that make it so rugs don’t slide.
- A hot glue gun and glue.
1. Using a serrated kitchen knife I cute the pool noodle into 5-ish inch pieces. I got 10 pieces out of 1 pool noodle which was enough to make 5 pigs.
2. Then I hot glued the sides of 2 green noodle pieces together. I had to hold them firmly together for a bit while the glue cooled. I suppose a smarter idea would be to glue them together and then put a rubber band around them until they cool so you don’t have to sit there and hold them. Wish I would’ve thought of that at the time.
3. Then I cut out my felt pieces and glued them on to the green sections to create the pigs from Angry Birds.
4. I also glued on the googly eyes.
5. Then I cut strips of the rubber placemat out the length and width of the pigs and glued them to the bottom. This is so the pigs will be more sturdy standing up on the planters and so they won’t fall down as easily. It is actually pretty effective I was happy to find out.
6. Then I cut the felt pieces out for the red angry bird and glued those to the foam ball.
7. Thats IT!! Then I just stacked up the planters like giant building blocks and stood the pigs at varying levels and let me son chuck the angry bird at the tower of pigs. He had a blast and LOVES his new Angry Bird game.
This is great because you can stack the planters in all sorts of ways to create differing levels of difficulty. We set it up on the floor and put down a line on the carpet that Peyton had to throw from. I also ended up making a little yellow felt crown and turning one of the pigs into the Queen which Peyton loved. Hes been stacking the tower around the Queen like a fort with the other pigs “protecting her”. Totally worth the $16 and the hour it took to put it together. :)
