Friday, February 6, 2009

What I Did With Choking Hazards


Understanding that I might be the very last craftybloggy
person in the universe to discover them, today's post is
all about these I-Spy Bags. I've seen the Find-It games and
coveted them - the only reason I don't own one is
because it requires some reading and the kids aren't
readers yet. Then I saw bags like these at a recent indoor
garage sale and couldn't get them out of my mind.

They are so simple, and clever. But that's beside the point.
The main thing is that they are ROUND. Therefore they are
superior and I must have them.

They remind me of submarine portholes -
here's a happy stack of four.

They are filled with a distractor material,
like poly beads or rice

which we also have in different colors at home
(explanation here).


I scouted around the house collecting choking hazards
(easy) and took a picture of them before dumping them
in the bag. The picture is for small non-reading people

but there's also the Reader's Version at the back of
the photograph, assuming the kids might still play
with this when they get that old. And then the whole
Key card is laminated to drool-proof it.

Dangly things often get caught in car doors, escalators,
under feet and in small teething mouths, so there's a
see-through pocket at the back to tuck it in.


It's a nice way to use the Dangerous Small Objects lying
around but you can also make your own tinys to
chuck in - I liked other peoples' idea of sticking a kid's
photo to a Scrabble tile, for instance. We still want to
play Scrabble with all the tiles intact someday when the
kids are literate, so I made tiles from air-dry clay
and stuck the kids' photos on them.

These are so ridiculously easy to make that I didn't
bother to do a tutorial. Also, there are already excellent
tutorials out there - try here and here.
And some lovely I-Spy bags in other fun
(but inferior*) shapes here.

*Only because they aren't ROUND, I mean. But I jest. You have
 to check this site out to see their truly beautiful and creative 
shapes! Great place to buy these bags if you don't feel up to 
collecting choking hazards yourself!


5 comments:

  1. They are fab! And I've never seen that idea before so I think a tutorial is definitely necessary!!!!!

    Lucy x

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  2. we r so honored to have 2 I-Spy bags. u r def right about the photo part. the boys had a gd time searching for their photos. thank u! & we had such a gd dinner n dessert. yum! & i had a 2nd helping of bubor hitam when we reached home. heheh.

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  3. Fabulous! Yet another idea of yours that I now want to do too. And I love that you put pictures, not just words. And then what a clever idea to make a little pocket to tuck it into! I'm with ya on the "dangers" of danglies.

    Now all it needs is a dry erase marker so they can cross things off as they find them... and mark all over walls and furniture in ink that doesn't wash off easily.

    OK, on second thought, scratch that idea! : )

    By the way, how big are the bags?

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  4. Er, I didn't measure them when I cut them out - I found a round mouse pad lying around and traced around it. But I went and measured them just only and they were 8" in diameter, with the vinyl window opening of 4.25". I printed a 4.5 x 6 photo (digital size) and trimmed as close as I could without cropping off any of the content.

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  5. Well, you have definitely not been the last blogger to know about I spy bags - probably I have been. :-) I read about them the first time on your blog. They are so great!!! I made an "I spy bottle" for my daughter last summer. She likes it - but always wanted to open it and get the small bits out. Therefore yours seem much better to me. And so cute!!!

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