A Do-it-yourself I Spy Jar

Samantha and I had a mommy-daughter date today.  We went out for tea at a real English tea room, and it was so fun to watch how grown-up my little girl has become.  She learned about proper tea pouring (or hot chocolate pouring, in her case) etiquette and how to eat tiny sandwiches.  Isn't she cute?

Then we went into a ton of really cute shops.  The kind we wouldn't dare enter if the younger brother were with us.  We were in the coolest toy shop and Samantha stumbled across all these little miniature animals.  She just HAD to have them.  I immediately thought of the DIY I Spy projects that I have seen on pinterest, so I decided to try to make our own.  I'm all for games that are self-contained and require no pick-up.  I may or may not throw away tiny game pieces whenever I step on them.  And I figured it would be great for the long car rides to Montana.

What you need:

• A jar or bottle of some sort (we had a 32 oz mason jar)

• 20-30 little items

• Rice (or beads or sand)

• A camera and printer

• Glue gun or other sealing agent (unless, unlike me, you like to pick up little toys and rice with your feet)

• Fabric (optional)

• Ribbon (optional)

• Laminator (because laminating is fun and we really don't get to do enough of it)

• Hole punch

What to do:

Collect your treasures.  They can be all kinds of things from your junk drawer.  We had some cool animals from the toy store to put in plus random coins and stuff.  Oh, and the fake ring I got for when my fingers were super swollen from being pregnant and couldn't fit my wedding ring on my sausage fingers.  Putting that bad boy in there because I won't be needing that again.

Arrange your treasures on a white background and snap a picture if you have kids who can't read yet.  I wrote a list and took a picture to encourage my just-reading daughter to use the words, and my son has the picture.  My picture looked like this:

You can print it out and laminate it as is, or add a list of the items on back.  Punch a hole in the corner so you can tie it to your jar.

Fill the jar 1/4 of the way with rice and then put a handful of your little treasure in. Fill half-way and then put the rest of your little treasures in.  Bottles with small openings will make it harder to fit things in, but our wide-mouth jar was a cinch.  Fill the rest of your jar with rice, stopping about an inch short of the top of the jar.

Glue your lid on.  Really glue it on there.  Nothing turns an I Spy jar into a bad idea like an open I Spy jar.  Especially when opened by an almost three year-old boy.

You can leave it like that, or you can decorate it with some fabric and ribbon.  If you don't have fabric, just figure out a way to attach your picture/list to your jar.  I had some burlap and chevron ribbon laying around, so my jar ended up looking like this:

{Please kindly ignore that my word processor automatically corrected Krone (Norwegian currency) to crone (an offensive term meant to insult a woman's age, appearance, and temperament).  That is a lesson for when the kids are a little older.}

This took about an hour or so to complete.  One hour for countless hours of no questions?  Priceless.  This unplugging thing has been so much more than I thought it would be.