It all started at IKEA... or a Venn diagram activity box

I was at IKEA a while ago and saw these adorable little containers. They were so cute I had to buy some, even though I had no earthly idea what I was going to use them for. But I love little containers and these were cute and happy and came in more colors than these and you should be impressed I only bought a few.

Then in the midst of homeschool planning, I ordered a bunch of peg people blanks. At the time, it seemed like a good idea, but when they arrived, I realized I had absolutely no memory of what that good idea was.

So I had cute little containers and bunches of peg people. Surely I could do something with them. And then it came to me... Venn Diagrams! (Bear with me, here.) I love Venn diagrams. I love the sorting and the logic they require. I always thought they were fun. Peg people are fun. Cool containers are fun. Venn diagrams are fun.

Thus the Venn diagram activity box was born.

First, I painted a bunch of peg people with different attributes.

Some are happy.

Some are sad.

Some have glasses, some don't. And there is three different hair colors and six different base colors. Here is the box all put together.

To play, a child selects two attribute cards and places them above the two circles. Then a peg person is placed depending on where it fits. Sometimes the circles will overlap, and sometimes they won't. Sometimes all the peg people will fit in a circle, and sometimes they won't.

For example, here I grabbed 'frowning' and 'no glasses'. I then picked up each peg person and put it in the correct place.

The frowning people.

The people with no glasses.

And the intersection of frowning people with no glasses.

In this example, the happy people with glasses didn't get to stand in a circle, so they are off to the side.

I keep making interesting looking stuff, and my children keep asking me, "Do we get to start school yet?" Hehehe... it's all part of my secret plan. By next week, they will be practically begging me to begin.
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Oh, and check out this new adoption site that has linked to one of my articles, Truth and Consequences