Turn your little one's favorite food into a silly sport! It's easy as pie to be a master chef with this target practice game played with a pizza board constructed out of felt and Velcro bean bag "toppings." This project utilizes your child's motor skills and coordination, as he cuts and makes the toppings and then attempts to aim his throws at the pizza board. This amusing activity can be played by just you and your child, but it is also a surefire hit to entertain all of his friends!
What You Need:
- Large sheet of brown tagboard or cardboard (at least 2 sq. feet)
- Yellow felt (about 2 sq. feet)
- Brown, red, and green squares of felt (or other "topping" colors, at least 1 sq. foot each)
- Velcro strips (can be found at a craft or fabric store)
- Hot glue gun
- Dry beans or rice
- Black permanent marker
What You Do:
- To create the pizza target board, help your child to cut the large sheet of cardboard into a giant circle of at least 20" diameter. Then, cut out a circle of yellow felt with a diameter that is 2" less than the circle of cardboard.
- Ask your child to glue the circle of felt to the center of the cardboard. The small portion of brown cardboard visible will appear as the "crust" of the pizza, with the yellow circle inside being the "cheesy" center.
- Invite your child to use a permanent marker to draw lines on the pizza to divide it into slices.
- Ask your child to decide what kind of topping the pizza will have. If the pizza has pepperoni, sausage, and peppers, help him pick out colors of felt for each topping (red, brown, and green). Cut each topping in its shape out of the felt in pairs of two; for each piece of sausage, cut out two round ovals, a front and back side.
- Ask your child to match each pair of two cut-out toppings and begin hot gluing them together around almost every opening, only leaving a small hole to fill each topping with beans. Ask your child to fill a small amount of beans into each felt topping (this will add weight to each topping as it is thrown). Help him glue up the hole so that each piece of felt is sealed.
- When each topping is finished, take the Velcro strips and assist your child in gluing strips on the outside of each topping. Put a strip of Velcro on both the front and back of each topping.
- When each topping is complete, hang the pizza pie up on a wall, or prop it up, and ask your child to stand a few feet away. Have him aim to toss his desired toppings onto the pizza.
Challenge your child to see if he can land a topping on each different slice, or maybe right in the center. You can vary the objectives of each round to make the game more or less difficult. As your child's aim gets better, vary the distance that he stands from the pizza board to make it more challenging. Order up!
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