I have a bunch of three inch square blocks for my grandkids’ imaginative play. They were actually decorating blocks with letters printed on one side to spell “S-P-R-I-N-G.” I bought a lot of sets of SPRING blocks on clearance a few years ago thinking that I would someday paint them with my grandson. The kids have fun playing with the blocks and the blocks are still waiting for a paint job. Now that he’s learning to read, I suppose I could play a game with him to see how many words he could make with only those letters.

I wanted to make another fall decoration for Thanksgiving and figured the kids would not miss a few of the blocks for this project: However, I did not want to make this transformation permanent and I only wanted to use materials I had on hand. So the materials for this project were:

brown paper grocery bag
letters for stamping (I used foam letters from a kid puzzle)
brown paint
gold string

I cut strips of brown paper bag slightly narrower than the block to fit all the way around the middle of the block. The next step was stamping a letter in the middle of each strip using the letters from a foam puzzle I purchased a while back for crafting. I started with orange paint but decided I liked the look of brown better. After the paint dried, I wrapped each strip around a block and taped the paper together in the back with transparent tape. Then to add just a touch of fanciness to the blocks, I wrapped some gold colored string around each block and tied the ends at the back. It did not take long to transform the blocks and the transformation is not permanent but will add a nice touch to our Thanksgiving celebration. Then the kids can have those blocks back…that is, unless I decide to make some block letters for Christmas. Hmmm….Do you have some wooden blocks at your house that you could transform for a special celebration? How about a birthday message? Or maybe a congratulations for a special achievement? Be creative and think of things you have around your house that you can temporarily transform to make someone in your family feel special.