Homemade Puzzles

Another project that I am making today for our weekend away is puzzles. I hate losing pieces to puzzles. Because of that I will not bring any of our puzzles along this weekend.
However I will be making some puzzles to take with us. It seems like a simple project.
To do it the following materials are needed:
pictures- from anywhere (I am using pictures that I cut out of cards and magazines as well as coloring book pages) you could even use photographs
cardboard (I am recycling an animal cracker box)
glue
laminating paper (optional but it will lengthen the life of the puzzle)

The process is simple. First take the picture and glue it to cardboard. After the glue dries you then laminate the puzzle (if you choose). I am using contact paper beucase it was free and it is easy to use. After everything is laminated then cut the puzzle into the desired number of pieces. Obviously the older the child the more complicated you can make the puzzle. After the pieces are cut you can mark them in some way (colored dots work well) so that you can easily tell waht puzle the pieces belong to. I also plan to count the number of pieces to each puzzle and then label the bag with that number. This will make it easy to identify if we have all of the pieces or not.

I am making this alone, but it seems like an easy activity for a child to help with. They could color their own pictures and help cut out the pieces (depending on scissor skills).

Hopefully this will be another activity to keep big rugrat occupied in Maine. Little rugrat may even have fun although I don't think he is quite able to put puzzles together yet!