DIY Word Magnets

A while back I came across my old word magnets. You remember when they were all the rage? Almost every house in town had a set on a fridge or filing cabinet, and if you didn't, you wanted one. 



I decided they would perfect for the boys to play with so I went to work cleaning out the more inappropriate words (yes it was an "adult" themed set. I bought them when I was 21 and kid-less. Yes, they were fun at parties, be jealous of my awesome-ness.)  from the bag.
  
 The boys enjoyed them, but there were a few problems. After cleaning out the adult words, there wasn't much left. There definitely wasn't any fun kid words. They constantly asked me to find them words that I didn't have. I googled and found kid sets, but I really didn't feel like paying the $15 a set. So I decided to make some.

Off to the craft store we went where I found these...

Yup, printable magnet sheets. Awesome. Exactly what I wanted. I got to work on Photoshop to make my super cool, functional, teaching magnets. 

 I got started making a template on Photoshop. I decided I wanted my magnets to be about an inch tall, and I was going to use a font similar to the D'nealian writing that Dawson learns in school. I think I used about a 30 pt font size. I made 2 sheets. One filled with fun words that kids would use. Animals, people, toys, food, etc. The other was filled with words necessary to make a sentence.

This is what the sheets look like out of the package. They are a little thinner than I would like, but I suppose they need to be if they are going to be going through a printer. Just remember to only put ONE sheet in at a time! They are magnetic after all.

 This is what they looked like after I printed them. I'm not gonna lie. I was excited. They aren't fancy by any means, but they are pretty flipping cool. I got to work cutting them up. Personally, I couldn't cut a straight line to save my life; even with the fancy paper cutters. so, I used scissors. I seem to have more control over scissors...that and I was too lazy to dig out my paper cutter. 

 This is what I ended up with. A big pile of words and a blurry picture because I deleted the wrong picture and I'm not about to enter the abyss that is my recycling bin to find the right one. 

This is our magnet board, with a few of the magnets on them. This is actually my craft show display that the boys are temporarily using. I plan on making a bigger board soon, I hope. 


 Anyways...this was a pretty cool craft. It cost me around $8, and I still have a sheet left that I have plans for. It would have cost less if I had used a coupon. I highly suggest you make these for your children! They are a ton of fun and it's awesome reading the sentences they write!