DIY word magnets and hanging tray

[aylacat18]

Make Your Own Word Magnets!

The Front:




Close Up:




The Back:

I decided to make my 14 year old niece a Christmas present. She loves to play with my word magnets whenever she comes over so I decided to make her some. Making them is a million times cheaper than buying them in the store.

Because she doesn't have a fridge in her room I painted a cookie sheet to hang them on. The front looks like binder paper and the back stores all the extra word magnets.

For a word list I googled the most common used words in the English language and the top 300 SAT words. I figured if she has magnets with SAT words on them she might get curious about what they mean and look them up and she might remember how to spell them later. It's never too early to start studying!


Materials For Magnets:

• Sticky Magnet Sheets     
• Printed Word List 
• Mod Podge 
• Scissors
• Paint Brushes

Materials For Tray:

• Cookie Sheet 
• Paint Brushes
• Paint

Steps For Magnets:

• Decide what words you want and type a list.
• Before you print make sure you have lots of space between words and between each row. You can resize the borders on your page so that the print area of your page will fit on your magnet sheet.
• Let the printer ink dry.
• Attach print out of words to magnet sheet.
• Cut magnet sheet. (If you use the Mod Podge before you cut the magnets will warp when you cut them.)
• Paint over each sheet with Mod Podge to protect magnets from getting dirty with fingerprints. (This is easy to do if you stick them to the cookie sheet while you paint them.)
• Let dry and you're done!

Steps For Tray:

• Paint bottom of tray to look nice.
• Put word magnets on the inside.
• Hang on the wall with push pins.

It's done!

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[FaeoftheRoots]

What a great idea!  I love the tray painted to look like paper.

[sactownsue]

Great idea. I love educational toys where they don't always realize they are learning til it's too late. 

[IllusionsOfNormal]

I love this idea!  Thanks for the magnet modpodge tip - I would have tried to do it first thinking it would save time.

[selkie]

That is SO COOL!
I wonder if contact paper (only contact brand) would work for covering the magnets?

Selkie

[around]

this is an incredible idea!
i love how you chose SAT words to help her!
so the gift is smart and so are you!!!

[JLMS]

Great gift idea and she will love it. You are so smart!!!!

[Lunapooka]

This is really clever.  So, you glued the word sheet to the magnet sheet, cut them out, then modge podged over it?  What did you use to glue the words to the magnet?

[artwear]

Terrific gift and excellent craftmanship. This is the kind of thing a kid will play with forever --  learning all the way.   ModgePodge was the best choice to cover the words.  A kid probably couldn't resist the urge to peal off contact paper.

[sarahmakes]

I like the way you painted it. This made me smile because a while back I used to keep a cookie sheet in my college dorm room and play with magnetic poetry to relax.