Monday made: Hanging out the laundry

Hello!  Recently I've been trying to plan more learning activities for the little boy since I think there's only that many times that he can play with lego, blocks and stacking rings.  One of the activities we've tried is pegging, where I tied a clothes line at one corner of the playpen and taught him how to hang his shirt on the line and clip it using pegs... while also reinforcing his learning about the colours of the pegs, since he's been particularly interested in identifying colours now.

However, the line stretches across his playpen around the height where his neck is, and the little boy keeps trying to walk through it and keeps getting it caught around his neck.  I've been worried that it'll hurt him one day, so I ended up making a mini-clothes line inspired by this version over at Childhood 101:

To make something similar, just take a shoebox and cut one side open (This allows you to leave the top of the box open for easier access to the line).  I took an art piece done by the little boy as the background (We'd coloured the sun and clouds using crayons, and the blue sky using paint), and added grass cut out of construction paper since his artwork didn't cover the bottom part.  Then just punch holes through the sides of the box and tie twine (you might want to reinforce the holes using either those reinforcement ring stickers... I used eyelets since I had a crop-a-dile), and you're good to go!

Other pointers that might be useful:
1. Try experimenting with different clothes pegs.  Junior J had difficulty handling those little wooden ones I had, so I used the larger plastic ones which are easier to grip for now.  The colourful plastic ones are also good for learning about colours.

2. I made "clothes" by cutting out shapes out of blue felt (since its his favourite colour), and will be adding more colours and clothing types in the future.  You can get inexpensive felt in rolls at Daiso. :)

3. If you use a box to make this activity, keep the lid.  Once you are done playing, you can just keep the pegs and clothes in the box, fold down the cut up section, put the lid back on, and you have everything nicely contained. :)

Happy pegging!