Rock Matching Game

This project was inspired by one of my new favorite blogs, The Artful Parent. She made a set of fabric heart covered rocks for Valentine's Day, and I immediately wanted to do the same for Lincoln. Only...I had no rocks. Rather, I had no rocks larger than a pebble, and there was no way I was cutting hearts that small (not to mention that it would have been a fairly obvious choking hazard. But! This past weekend, a solution was found. Yes, it took driving 3.5 hours to Austin (no, not just for the rocks...we were visiting friends), but I do think the rocks I "found" (read: stole from our friends' apartment complex) are perfect :) I made sure not to take all from one spot, so I don't think they'll ever be missed...

Since Valentine's Day had come and gone, I modified the project and turned it into a matching game for Lincoln. I had pinched (<---that there's criminal speak for "stolen") 10 rocks from the apartment complex, and discovered upon arriving home that Lincoln had, in his first act of hoodlum-ism, tossed an additional 2 rocks into the bag. So we began our project with an even dozen smooth, palm-sized rocks.

Before starting, I cut out 5 pairs of matching shapes from small scraps of fabric using pinking shears (in case you are wondering...hearts, circles, squares, rectangles, and triangles). Why only 5 sets, when I had 12 rocks? Because stars proved INCREDIBLY hard to cut out that small with pinking shears, and I only just now thought of the possibility of diamonds. Oops.

Onto the fun part!

I wanted Lincoln to be able to participate in this art project, and since I didn't want him using the Mod Podge glue, I decided that he could paint the rocks before I glued on the shapes. He mostly just dabbed each rock with a blob of paint. This took him about 2 minutes, total, and then he moved on to this:

Yep. Wodat Lincoln again! Hope you all aren't tired of seeing him yet, because I don't think that game will be getting old any time soon....

Next step: adhere fabric to rocks with a layer of Mod Podge adhesive. I just brushed it on with one of Lincoln's paintbrushes. You'll notice 2 of the rocks are just painted (remember how I didn't want to cut out stars?) Let dry and artfully arrange in a circle to take a lovely picture.

Now, I bet you are wondering how exactly we plan to use these (right? right??). You're in luck! I plan to tell you, via an adorable photo set of my son and some witty captions (fist pump!).

Ok, the first one doesn't come with a picture. I plan to keep the rocks in a drawstring pouch. We will pull the rocks out one at a time and make piles of matches. We may also place the rocks face down on the floor and take turns turning them over, a la Memory.

You could also place the rocks into your giant toy dump truck and push them around the yard! If your dump truck "driver" should happen to throw a fit every time a rock falls off the back, I recommend showing him how to place them closer to the front of the truck bed. I wish I had though of that before the 3rd tantrum...

This exciting use is called "perilously stack them on top of another large rock." Fun! (Also, notice, if you will, the red elastic band peeking out from the young balancers pants...big boy undawess!)
You could see if your dog would like to eat one (nope). But feel free to yell "Webwy, no no no eat wocks!" anyway. (a side note: up until this week, our dog, Wembley, has been pronounced "Wedy" by Lincoln. It has now morphed into "Webwy.")

Hope you enjoyed this long and rambling blog post trying to pass itself off as some kind of tutorial. I'm done now.

:)