We have a fun one for you today! This week my 4 year old is working on letter recognition and the letter of the week is G. The theme was "G is for Gumball"! We were able to play some fun learning games but the highlight of the week were these DIY Gumball machines. You may have seen many tutorials on how to create these candy dish like, faux machines, I just changed it up a bit. Even though the ones I have seen were very nice, most of them weren't kid friendly to create, ESPECIALLY for my clumsy 4- and 5-year Olds. Considering this, I decided to take the same concept and just tweaked it a bit in order to create a fantastic project fit for any little one.

    The best part about this project is that it's really cost effective, and I used a lot of supplies I already had from other homeschool projects. I really only needed to spend $3 to make it. That $3 was for the candy bowl, plastic cups and gumballs. However, we did use plenty of stickers and paint, and a couple of other supplies that I keep on hand for homeschool.  Alot of these supplies are optional, using them just made it more fun for the kiddos. If you don't already have some of these things laying around the house like I did and your kids like stickers as much as mine, the best part is, you can get EVERYTHING you need from the Dollar Tree! Here is a complete supply list for all the things that I used:

- Craft containers with lids

- Plastic cups

- Gumballs 

- Decorative stickers 

- Paint

- Paint brushes

- Sharpie 

- Aluminum Foil

- Glue gun (They don't sell this at Dollar Tree, but they do sell E6000 glue and that will work just fine. If you need a hot glue gun, I like the one below.)

And that's it! Once you gathered all your supplies, you can get started!

    First, I let my girls paint their plastic cups. Their favorite colors are pink and purple, so these color choices were a no brainer. Don't forget to 1st kid proof your painting area, painting with my kids always ends up in a mess. I would also suggest not having them paint the top of the cup (which was previously known as the bottom, until we turned them upside down). This way you can go ahead and hot glue the container to the top while it dries. It will take a minute for the cups to dry after painting, especially if your kids tend to just throw paint on in globs in certain areas, like mine.

    After they painted their cups, I set them to the side and took out the plastic containers. Just a little side note, I did wash the containers first. I would definitely recommend that since we are putting gum inside of them. I would also recommend letting them completely dry out in the inside after washing so the gumballs won't stick together.  Once I gave the girls the containers, in order to incorporate more of our homeschool lesson into the project, I had the girls practice counting objects by having them place the gumballs inside the container, counting them one-by-one.

    Once they were done, I hot glued the gum filled containers to the top (formally bottom) of the cup and set them aside to fully dry. I waited 2-3 hours for the cups to dry before we handled them again. If doing this apart of a homeschool lesson I would maybe paint one day and finish up the project the next, or you could start the project at the beginning of the day and finish it at the end, which is what we did. 

    Once everything was nice and dry, I took a small piece of aluminum foil. Bent and twisted it to try and replicate the turn dials that are on an actual gumball machine. I then hot glued it to the front of the cups. Once I finished that, I took a sharpie and drew an opening on the front to imitate where the gumballs would be dispensed on a real gumball machine. Lastly, the girls finished decorating their gumball machines with plenty of stickers. And that's it! The girls had a blast and I think they came out pretty good.

    All and all I think this project is going to be very memorable for my girls. The best part is, after completing the gumball machines my four-year-old has had no problem remembering the letter G, and at the end of the day that's what's most important. What do you guys think? Leave your comments below and let us know if you tried making these "G is for Gumball" gumball machines.

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