Magnetic Pom Pom Activity

Recently, seven friends and I decided to do a busy bag swap. (For more on what a "busy bag swap" is, go here). It seemed like a great idea, and I'm always looking for ways to keep C-bub entertained. As I was browsing, I came upon this, and thought it would be fairly easy to make 8 sets. Well, this "easy" project became much more involved than I had expected!

First I wanted to give my friends a complete set that they could take in their diaper bags/purses when they were on the go, so no cookie sheets or baking pans. I thought, I'll just go to Home Depot and buy some metal sheets. How simple would that be. After much looking around, I decided to go with something like this sheet metal that is used for roofing. However instead of buying individual sheets, I got a roll that was 8" by like 20 ft long. Needless to say I have a lot leftover. But it was much cheaper to go this route.

Since you need special metal cutting scissors (which I wasn't about to spend $13 on), one of the sweet employees at Home Depot spent the next 15 minutes with me cutting 8 sheets that were 8"x10".

The edges were very sharp, so I wrapped the border with silver duct tape.

I wanted them cut to 8"x10" since I was going to put them in sheet protectors. I also wanted room to put an adhesive magnetic strip (leftover from what I had used for the pom poms) at the opening so the metal sheet and the worksheets would not fall out.

This is the first one I made. For the rest I didn't use a long strip across the top, but rather just a little piece of magnet (about 1.5 inches in length). I found that to be better since the long strip kept closing when I would take the worksheets in and out.

Okay, now to how I assembled the kits...

Supplies needed:

-metal sheets
-sheet protectors (I got these at Amazon.com)
-flexible adhesive magnetic strip (something like this)
-pom poms (got a several bags like this one from Hobby Lobby, but others have scored some for cheap at the dollar store)
-hot glue gun
-worksheets* (see below for free templates)

Steps:
1. Go through the drama of buying a huge heavy roll of metal from Home Depot and cut individual sheets. Or just use a metal cookie sheet that you have in your baking drawer. :)
2. Cut the magnetic strip into pieces that are about 1"x1".
3. Use hot glue gun to glue the magnetic pieces to the pom poms.

4. Print out the worksheets*.
5. Put the metal sheet into sheet protector (if going this route) and put one worksheet in front of it and the rest behind it. Rotate worksheets for endless fun! ;)

*Here are the templates I made. I got inspiration from here, but I also came up with a few other fun ones. Please note that they have faint lines where you are to cut them so they can be 8"x10" since I wanted them to be the same size as the metal sheet.

Click on captions to retrieve the pdf.

Click HERE for PDF

Click HERE for PDF

Click HERE for PDF

Click HERE for PDF

My friend used this activity to keep her 3 year-old entertained on a plane ride recently, and she said he played with it for 30 minutes. That's a success to me!

Happy Crafting!