DIY Felt Play Mats: Farm & Grassland Pretend Play

My kids love our felt car mat so I decided to make one for our Anamalz.  I decided to make DIY felt play mats with a farm and grassland theme.

 

I drew out a basic template of what I planned to do and then cut my felt to match, I organized it a bit differently than my original plan but I didn’t glue anything until I got the felt garden and house cut out and tested how they all fit together on the mat.

 

 

I knew I was going to be connecting two mats so I attached a strip of blue to the edge of one side of my grass.

 

I cut the house from regular felt as I didn’t have any stiffened felt (and didn’t feel like making any) and then used cardboard from our recycled box collection on the seams so it makes it a bit more stable.

 

 

I used hot glue to attach everything and was trying to get the whole thing done at nap time so a few things got a bit rushed/sloppy, I wish I had done it at bedtime or taken two nap times to finish it so I could have made it a bit more finished but really the kids didn’t care how “non-perfect” it looked. If I had a lot more time I would have stiffened the felt for the house, rather than using the cardboard.

 

 

The garden is the kid’s favorite part.  They use the gnomes from our Nature Table or the people from our WOW toy set to garden and “feed the animals.”  I made the carrots with a pocket so that they can pull them out of the “ground” and both the strawberries and lettuce are attached with Velcro.

 

The farm all put together:

 

The Grassland and cave were the easiest to make. To make the grass I just cut two rectangles then cut triangles out of one side to make the grass.  On the other side of the grass rectangle, I folded over and glued to the mat to make grass.  I did the same thing with the bush next to the cave.  The cave itself is just a piece of regular felt I fold into a cone shape and glued down.  I added a “floor” to it of lighter brown to give it character and to hide my sloppy gluing 🙂

 

 

(again photos are off my phone so the coloring is a bit off)

 

Anamalz at play:

 

After I had each mat complete I used the road and river strips to connect the mats into one large mat. I’m thinking of adding a house and playground to the other side of the road but I’m still formulating that 🙂