Monday 12 March 2012

Travel Fun

A while back I envisaged the idea of making a compendium of travel games to keep the babes amused and engaged when we were traveling and visiting various people. The idea was to take our favourite games whilst unemcumbered by the weight and size of the orginals. I drew largely on Rashida's tutorial for the checkerboard and pouch whilst making a few significant changes.

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Firstly, I made a sack in which to carry our games in. A simple enough drawstring bag with no whistles and bells.

The second difference was that as well as checkerboard pieces made out of fabric covered buttons I also made them into chess pieces by drawing on simple enough chess ideograms.

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It seemed such a waste to let the reverse side go empty, so I decided to turn the back into a doubled-up board for snakes and ladders and Blokus.

The larger squares, comprising of four smaller squares, make one snakes and ladders square, whilst the smaller ones are used for the Blokus board.

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The Blokus pieces themselves were constructed from felt sewn onto canvas after drawing around the original Blokus pieces that we already have. Yes it took absolutely forever.

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And it turns out it might be a bit pointless. After all, travel games are only needed if you go traveling, and given the state of our finances and price of petrol the only places we'll be going to are the ones we can walk to!

But, if ever we do have a chance to fly the nest, we're ready.



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19 comments:

  1. That is lovley, what did you use to draw the chess pieces?

    Do you still have your allotment? maybe you could take it with you then? xx

    Amanda

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  2. excellent!! I use to make travel packs when I was a nanny for a little girl to keep her busy in the car or building if we needed to run errands. In one, I took index cards and pasted coloring book images in them, then put them in a small photo album. You can use erasable markers or crayons to color on the plastic and then wipe it off so they are reusable! I just keep the markers and the book together in one pouch.

    In another pouch I would put a small sized book and a couple of small toys that match the theme. Like if the book was about jungle animals I would put a rubber snake and frog inside with the book and ask her to match the pictures or make up a story or something.

    Another one just had small toys inside like some plastic barn animals with fences and stuff. She wasn't really old enough for complex games and she couldn't read yet.

    I kept this stuff in a bag like yours with some animal crackers and a bottle of bubbles lol.

    I love the blokus board, what a great idea!!! so much detail too...

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  3. I love this, what a great idea, especially now the weather is getting us ready for a few road trips!

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  4. Allotment - yes, for now. Umming over whether to give it up. We'll see. The chess pieces were drawn with a micron pen.

    Wow some good ideas there. I need to make a few pouches for 'in the car' games. Maybe I'll put a few of those idea to use. I think they are well into 'spotter' games now so a few I-Spy tasks would work, although TBH my two are no trouble in the car masha'allah. They amuse themselves (just have to keep the snacks flowing!)

    Well, it's a moot point about the weather. Have no money for petrol for road trips!

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    1. maybe they would like car bingo. you print a bingo-card with common stuff on the streets and they mark the square when they see the thing outside the window.

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  5. That is such a great idea. I love the Blockus too! Very unique.

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  6. Thanks Lisa. Unique and perhaps a little insane...

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  7. Thankyou! Never again though....

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  8. Excuse me but that is AMAZING. My son would probably put one of the chess pieces up his nostril to make sister laugh though. And then the 'road trip' would be to A&E. Ho hum...

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  9. Oh trudy that actually made me guffaw and now everyone's looking at me...

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  10. WOW, just wow. You are amazing! We are off to cornwall at the end of the month and I need some ideas to keep the kids happy, but at 2 and 4 years I am finding it tricky.

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  11. LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE! Ive seen rashidas too and always thought 'id love to do that' - deffo a project il consider once Zakareeya is in school insha'Allah. Right now, i dont think i have the patience!
    Aqeela xx

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  12. It's a straight forward easy make. It got a little insane with the blokus pieces but so long as you don't go down that route it doesnt take long.

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  13. Wow, what a project!!!! Love the fabric choices too...what is that multicolored one? Just brilliant!

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  14. Magic beans by sandy Klopp of American Jane, I think. In aqua

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