DIY Toddler Placemats

Olive graduated out of her high chair a few weeks ago and has LOVED sitting in her booster at the table with us.  She is so much happier and no longer fights meal time.  Hooray for all of us!!

I started shopping around for some toddler place mats hoping to find some with letters, numbers and lots of pictures for her to name.  I searched all the big name stores and couldn't find anything like I described.  I decided that it wouldn't be that hard to make my own place mats.  One of my aunts recently commented on one of my pictures and said, "You can take the teacher out of the classroom, but she'll still find a way to teach!"  It's true :)

I gathered magazines and used the Sunday ads to come up with pictures of
letters

numbers

animals

food

You'll need:

magazines or Sunday ads

glue stick

scrapbook paper

laminating

I collected pictures for a week or two, cut them all out and attached them scrapbook paper.  I let them dry for a few days and then took them to Staples to be laminated.  Since they were on 12x12 inch paper, I had to pay for the over sized laminating.  It cost $1.99 per item.  The laminating was really thick and heavy duty.  I opted to cut them apart myself since there was an additional cutting fee for Staples to cut them.  The whole DIY project cost me about $8 since I had all of the supplies on hand and only had to pay for laminating.

The saleswoman at Staples tried very hard to convince me that my pictures weren't glued down well enough to go through the laminator.  She said they'd just peel up, but I assured her they'd be fine.  I have laminated many things in my days and knew this was going to work.  So if you run into a similar issue, just tell them to laminate away!

I collected a variety of pictures that Olive could already name as well as many new things.

I am SO PLEASED with how they turned out.  Olive LOVES them!  She names the animals, points to letters and numbers and likes to point out her favorite food.  My hopes are that she'll continue to learn new vocabulary with these place mats and learn while she's sitting at the dinner table.

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