I have a confession to make: I am a magazine hoarder. There are piles and piles throughout my house and I almost never, I mean never, throw a magazine away. I love flipping through them when I have a free moment (which pretty much never happens anymore) and I love using them for home decorating inspiration and recipes. So this week, in between rain drops and chillier weather, I was looking for something to occupy my toddler who was bouncing off the walls from so much inside time. Enter my stack of magazines! I dug out my collection of Seasons Magazines from HyVee (although you could certainly use other types of magazines). Have you seen this magazine? Well just a few quick flips through the pages and I knew what our activity would be. I broke down our activity into three steps to drag it out a little more (the forecast all week has been terrible)!
Here’s all you need to get started.
Supplies Used:
Magazines
Toddler Scissors (modify as appropriate for the age of your child — the parent or guardian can easily cut out the shapes and objects for the child if they are too young)
Glue or Glue Stick
Paint Brush or Qtip (to apply the glue)
Paper Plate
Paper
Step 1 – Flip & Rip: While the baby slept, my son and I cuddled up and flipped through the pages of the magazine. I asked questions, had him find certain colors in the pages, identify certain shapes, etc. When he found a cool object in the picture he liked, we would rip out the page and set it aside. We did this with all three of our HyVee Magazines. We ended up with a great pile of pages that were filled with a variety of objects, such as flowers, vegetables, m&m’s (my son’s favorite) and shapes (circles, squares, etc).
Step 2 – Snip, Snip: My son loves to use his toddler scissors. Although he isn’t particularly good at it, I am always trying to find ways to work on his cutting skills. The magazine pages provided a great opportunity for him to practice cutting on the lines. If your child is a little too young for cutting, just cut out the objects for him or her.
Step 3 – Glue it Down: Once all of our shapes and objects were cut out from our torn magazine pages, I simply grabbed a paper plate, squirted out a blob of glue, and gave my son a paint brush to let him start gluing his shapes on to a piece of paper. 
There you have it. A quick and easy craft to occupy some downtime as the weather turns a little cooler and inside time increases.
