A Few of My Favorite Things: Wooden Marker Holder

So here we are, a little more than a month out from Christmas and the question, as always, is which gifts are the children still using/playing with and which have already worked their way to the bottom of the toy basket? Well, one thing that has not made its way far out of sight, and, in fact, has earned itself a place of honor in our kitchen is this wooden marker holder that my brother made for the kiddos:

The idea is to put the markers in upside down and then glue the caps in, making it easy even for the little guy to get all of the markers put away each time that he plays with them- which is a lot these days! As you can see, we have markers in big holes and then colored pencils in the small ones for now, but we could certainly change if Lilly decided she wanted to use the skinny markers. Now if you do not know my brother, or another remarkably handy person who could craft one of these for you, I am happy to tell you that you can find them on Etsy (like the one on the right) and in many early childhood classroom catalogs (the one on the left is from Discount School Supply). Sure, I was more excited about this gift than the kids were on Christmas day, but I still say: Yay for Christmas gifts that are cool and useful, too!