![]() Then they chose the fingerprint art for their blocks. They wrote their names on top of the pieces in pencil (I later traced over them with a Sharpie.). Step 4: This is the fun part! We went to school and had each student design 2 pieces. Our students chose from a space theme, vehicles, flowers, butterflies, birds, insects, and dinosaurs. Before you go to the class, create a couple of blocks with several designs completed so the students can pick their favorite designs. We found a lot of fun ideas on Pinterest. We were working with 4 and 5 year olds though, so we decided to have a bunch of designs from which they could choose. If we were to do this project again with older kids, we would probably just send a couple of blocks home with each student to paint the sides however they wanted to. It’s easy to paint the ends if you do it while they are stacked. A 1″ foam brush was ideal for painting the ends with clean lines. This isn’t necessary, but the other Room Parent and I thought it would look nice to have some color on the ends so we decided to paint the ends in vibrant versions of our school’s colors. I learned that the first set of stamps I purchased were too light to be seen on the stained wood. I learned that if the ends are not sanded properly that sap will start to come out of them. I learned that the original plan to paint the pieces did not look good. The pros at Home Depot cut that one piece into 9 game pieces for me, and I used those to try out different paints and stains. While the dads were cutting and sanding the class set, I went to Home Depot and bought a single 2×4. Trust me! Cutting, sanding, and staining the Jenga set is a big time commitment, so you want to go into decorating the set having your design finalized. Then I did a few extra coats of stain on the spots with ink on them and it covered them well. I used nail polish remover to take off some of the ink before staining them. It took about three hours to stain all the pieces well, but I did it when my son was in school and my daughter was at my mom’s house, so I was able to take my time and also clear some TV shows off of my DVR! One thing to note: most commercial wood is stamped, so about a third of the pieces had a stamp on them. With the crazy humidity in New Orleans, waterproofing the wood was a priority! To stain the pieces, I rolled some paper onto my kitchen table. If I did it again, I might have used another color stain, but I liked that this product would stain, seal, and waterproof the wood all in one step. I used Thompson’s WaterSeal Waterproofing stain in Acorn Brown. The dads who sanded ours did a great job rounding out the ends of each piece too so we don’t have any sharp corners. ![]() This is important because if the ends aren’t sanded down properly sap can start coming out of them. Step 1: Cut each 2×4 into (9) 10.5″ pieces so you have 54 pieces total.
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