The Olympics are well underway, and we’ve already had fun making our own bobsleds and dining on medal cookies. These medals aren’t for eating, but they make for fantastic pretend play if your little athletes want to climb up onto the podium!

First, find a circular object to trace for the outline of your medals – go for big here, the idea is a giant medal!

Next, we piped designs onto our medals with puffy paint. Older kids can get very detailed with this – writing out 1st, 2nd, or 3rd, or the year, or making laurel leaf designs. Travis just adores squirting puffy paint, so I knew his would take forever to dry, and put together a few medals with a lighter hand on the puffy paint.

Set aside to dry.

Next our medals needed a metallic coat of paint. We only had silver and gold, but you can add a bronze or coppery-colored one if you have it!

Again, Travis was heavy-handed on the paint, but I loved watching his enjoyment of the project, and set aside a few more useable medals. We left them to dry overnight.

In the morning, we punched a hole into the top of each medal and threaded red ribbon through.

And the medal goes to…!