You could say that once I discover something I become stuck on that idea. Hence the MANY toilet paper tube posts and projects we have done the past few months. Lately I have been stuck on this idea of tree blocks. You can find the first use for us here and then another one here.
I modified the idea of the tree blocks just a little bit, making them thinner and turning them into alphabet tree cookies!
My poor husband spent probably almost an hour yesterday cutting a big branch into 26 cookies for me, BY HAND (we don't own a power saw). Don't feel too bad for him he got a backrub out of the deal!
I wrote the letters on the cookies just with permanent marker and then cooked them for a little while in the oven to help dry them out a bit (the branch was a bit green) and kill any bugs that might be in them.
My sister suggested thinking of letters more just as shapes at this point with Sam and suggested that I create a matching game for her with letters. 52 cookies might have been pushing it in one night so I wrote out a set of letters on note cards.
Sam and I layed out the cards in order (we sang the alphabet very slowly while we did this) and then pulled the tree cookies out of the bag one at a time and found the match.
The cookies are all different sizes, thicknesses and not all necessarily totally flat (he was using a hand saw!). But the imperfections are what make them so awesome. She can use these to build towers for Avery to knock over. Combine them with regular wood blocks to make things more interesting or use them with the cards to work on letters. Lots of options.
And Avery enjoyed the bag full of things for her to check out!
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The Nitty Gritty!
I am seeing so many more options for ways to work with this idea. A second set that are lower case so that when she is ready we can match uppercase with lowercase. Bigger ones! Not really any reason other than it would be cool to have HUGE tree cookies. If you had multiples of the same letters you could do simple spelling with them as well. Who needs those Leapster things, I've got tree branches and a marker!! HA!
Multiple purpose toys are amazing and these tree cookies (I am hoping!) will fit into that category. What would you do with a bunch of tree cookies?
