Kalliope Kids: Bean Bag Toss Game

I have been working on several projects this weekend, but none are finished yet…so you get a game I made for the kids last month (around the same time I made the giant checkers).  This one is a bean bag toss game–I think it’s also called a corn hole toss.

I made this one to fit on two tension rods that can then be put up in the doorways to our kitchen/family room (we have 2 doorways, different sizes, that this fits on–I made sure to buy appropriately sized expanding rods).  I made it out of a canvas painter’s drop cloth that I got from Home Depot–the cloth was big enough to make the game and two bags (one for the game board and one for the bean bags).  It was a good purchase for a few bucks!

The board has 5 holes to toss through–the four outer holes are each 10 points, and the middle is 50 (the middle hole is quite a bit smaller and harder to get the bags through).  I made sure that I could get the bags through each before I finalized it–I didn’t want it to be too hard for my little ones!  I also made each outer hole a different color, with the idea that the kids could play different games like just a simple toss, having to get the colors in the matching hole, upper/lower, or whatever they come up with.  The board is also reversible (there are numbers facing both ways) so it doesn’t matter which way it gets put up–helpful when the 7 year old is hanging it!

Now the game itself came after I decided to make a pile of bean bags–we play with these at the library and the baby seemed to love them, so I decided we needed our own batch!  The bean bags are in 4 colors, and are embroidered with numbers on one side with the corresponding number of dots on the other (it was around the time I was trying to teach the 4 year old her numbers from 10-20, and I thought this would help with that too!)  I stuffed them with pinto beans–the only kind of beans that I could find in a giant bag.

The other thing I discovered a couple weeks ago is that the bean bags are about the right size for me to juggle–I taught myself one evening!  The baby even tries to juggle them, which is awfully cute.

Oh yeah–as my sister thought I should mention, we had this up in the doorway one day with the gates closed (to keep the baby in the room), and one of our dogs tried to get out.  She has pretty good aim, and managed to get through the blue hole–but not all the way through.  Does that mean she’s worth 10 points or not?

Kalliope Kids: Giant Checkers!

I made this giant checkers board just before the block party we had last month–but decided that I needed storage pockets for the checkers themselves. Meeska has been playing with the checkers for a while, and we have now lost several colors, so I needed a way to store them so he can’t get at them (he is, after all, only a year and a half).

My checkers board measures about 56″ x 56″– give or take. I wanted to give it a rustic, homemade feel with the fabrics that K-Dogg chose, so I just cut squares and serged the edges (actually, it was two fold–I was also being lazy and didn’t want to finish the edges of all the squares–there are a lot!) I then laid them out in rows and sewed them on–long rows of sewing up and down the fabric. I also attached a backing on it, because it is made to go outside and can be doubled as an outdoor blanket (good for picnics in the park!).

Today I added the pockets for the checkers–if I had been thinking, I would have done this before attaching the back fabric since the stitching now shows on the front (good to remember for next time!). I made 2 pockets with flaps, added snaps so they stay closed, and sewed them on to alternate corners on the back side (one for each color). The ‘checkers’ themselves are 6″ foam circles that I found at the dollar store, and I was so happy to find them!

Now I just need to come up with some other board games that I can make giant size for playing outdoors!