Transfering Pom-Poms with a Clothespin

Sweet Pea is 41 months old.

From: I saw this quick Pegging Pom-Poms activity on All Join In.

Material:

• Clothespins.
• Ice cube tray.
• Pom-Poms or cotton balls.  (You will need as many pom-poms as there are spaces in your ice cube tray.)
• Bowl or basket for the pom-poms.

Procedure:

• Put the pom-poms in a basket.
• Sit near your tot and place the ice cube tray and clothespin in front of you.
• Show your tot how to squeeze the clothespin and grab a pom-pom with it.
• Lift the pom-pom out of the basket and move it to the ice cube tray.
• Demonstrate releasing the pom-pom into an empty space in the ice cube tray.
• Hand the clothespin over to your tot and let them try on their own.

• Encourage your tot to fill in each of the empty spaces with pom-poms.
• When all of the spaces are filled, invite your tot to use the clothespin to move each of the pom-poms back to the basket.

Observations: Sweet Pea had some trouble with this, and never really got 100% comfortable using the clothespin.   It took a lot of concentration and she often used her other hand to” feed” each of the pom-poms into the clothespin.

This was super easy to set up and Sweet Pea worked diligently to fill in each empty space on the ice cube tray with pom-poms and then returned all of them back to the basket.   She seemed to like this activity, but I don’t think she thought it was as fun as something like Sidewalk Water Painting.    She has not chosen this work again since I first showed it to her.  However, it is so easy to set up that I would recommend it as a tot tray for an older tot.

Notes from the Trenches: This is a good activity for an older tot, but younger tots may not have enough finger strength to manipulate the clothespins correctly.  When Sweet Pea was about 24 months we tried a clothes pin activity that ended up being much too difficult for her and I was sorry I had introduced it too early.

Rating: 3 Stars * (Easy, Independent, Frugal)