Craft Gossip

Independent craft blog since 2007

How to Machine Embroider on Puffy Foam

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Have you ever seen machine embroidery on puffy foam?  It looks really cool and gives projects extra dimension.  You can learn how to do it yourself with this tutorial from Machine Embroidery Geek.

Filled with plenty of tips, the article explains how to do it.  There are plenty of photos to help you along.  Not only that, but you will find ways to fix mistakes and what tools work best.

Can you imagine all of the fun projects you could make with puffy foam?  I think monograms would be lovely.  Kids especially would love to get something with their name machine embroidered on it.

You can get the free tutorial here: Machine Embroidery on Foam

[photo from Machine Embroidery Geek]

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Learning Activities with Snap Cubes

A classic manipulative in the preschool and early elementary classroom is the snap cube, also known as math cubes, unifix cubes or unit cubes. These little one inch cubes often come in a set of 100 in 10 different colors, and they snap together so they’re easy to use for all sorts of math learning, measuring and more. 

No Time for Flashcards has a cute robot printable to use with cubes to measure the height of each robot. That one is free but they also have other printable cube mats that are a paid resource. 

Catherine & Co uses math cubes to teach kids about measuring volume. They make a letter from cubes and then measure the volume (there’s a printable worksheet in the post). 

Pattern recognition is another fun and easy activity you can do with the cubes. You can use printables like these from Planning Playtime, or just make a pattern from cubes and have kids repeat it or figure out what comes next. There’s another good set of pattern printables at English Created Resources. 

Because there are 10 sets of 10 cubes in a pack, these are great for teaching one to one correspondence, counting, sorting and basic addition and subtraction. English Created Resources has great printable number mats you can use to form the number from cubes and count out the number of cubes that corresponds to that number.

ParenTutor has a great collection of snap cube activity ideas, most of which are just pictures, but it’s work taking a look through the post for ideas for using them at home or in the classroom. 

To give just a few of their examples, you can match linked blocks to the corresponding number of pieces, use blocks to find different ways to add up to 10, compare numbers and determine which one is more or less, skip counting and weighing different numbers of blocks. 

You can also use unit cubes to learn letters, like with these super cute alphabet mats from Fun Learning for Kids. Kids can trace the letter, make it out of cubes and practice writing a word that starts with that letter.

Of course you can also use them to build things, since they are blocks, and there are tons of pattern mats on Teachers Pay Teachers. I also love these dinosaur themed mats from Lets Go to Learn on Etsy.