it was designed to be a picture frame, with 3 cubes that spin, with 4 places on each cube for photos. it took me all of 30 minutes to select some letters, print them big on card stock, cut them to size, and slide them in their slots. voila! now, we have the best ever word family toy.
cosmo is familiar with the notion of word families from a song on one of our 1970s sesame street records (yes, we have more than one. yes, they get plenty of air play in our house.) so, with the fridge magnets, for instance, he will spell out P-E-T, W-E-T and J-E-T.
with this contraption, there are limitations (only 4 letters on each cube, only 3 cubes) but there is also a built-in structure (vowels in the center, consonants at the beginning and end), increasing the chances of forming actual words. i made extra letter cards, so we can switch it out from time to time.
it is tons of fun to play with-- cosmo likes to spin the cubes and see what word is randomly generated. sometimes you get a non-word, like DIT, but most of the time, it is a recognizable word. and in either case, it's a chance to talk about what is a known, english word, and what isn't. slang counts, as in the case of BOD.
DIY counts, too. obviously.
