Category: Pom Poms

Match ‘Em Tweezer Sort

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Tweezer Sort (3)

Here’s a way to trick your kids into practicing their fine motor skills while having fun (and matching up colors, too!). Because the game involves sharp, adult tweezers, I don’t recommend this game for kids younger than 3.

To set up, cut circles from construction paper, and place in the bottom of a muffin tin.

Tweezer Sort (1)

Now gather pom poms in a variety of colors. We had both regular and sparkly pom poms, which added nice variety.

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Give your child the tweezers; Travis was instantly thrilled, since normally mommy’s tweezers are off limits! I encouraged him to move the pom poms to the correct colored muffin tin.

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Travis thought it was fascinating that the soft regular pom poms were easier to pick up than the sparkly ones. He was so proud when he was able to do the latter.

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For a real challenge, I added in colored buttons as well. I briefly worried these might frustrate Travis, but it turns out they were his favorite item to move back and forth.

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In all honesty, it wasn’t long before he grew bored and decided the pom poms made great monster eyes.

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Then he was on to “baking” pom pom cookies in a muffin tin oven instead – nothing wrong with a little imagination though!

Fall Friends

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Fall Friends (9)

Here’s a quirky, sweet project to compliment any fall nature walk – make a collection of the items you find, then bring them home and turn them into “friends”.

Travis loved this element to a stroll we took at a local Audubon society, delightedly filling up the bag I brought along. Although unseasonably warm weather means we didn’t find too many brightly colored leaves yet, there is no shortage of neat things to find. Big seed pods were especially a hit, as were little acorn caps, pieces of bark, and other small treasures.

Fall Friends (1)

To make our friends once home, I gathered odds and ends from our craft bin – pom poms and buttons were good options for eyes.

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Ribbon and decorative tape could make smiles. Travis thought it was funny that the tape made a straight line for an “angry friend” (who actually was his favorite!) instead of a curved smile.

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Adults, you may need hot glue depending on what materials you’re working – pipe cleaner arms and legs needed the help of the hot glue gun, as did items we glued to roly-poly seed pods.

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In sum, have fun with this one. What will be the body of your friend – bark, a rock, a big leaf? The only limit is your child’s imagination!

Fall Friends (7)

Roll and Color

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Roll and Color (3)

I had so much fun with this little project because it counts as Travis’s first “board game.” Although he didn’t quite understand the full concept, it was a nice way to introduce him to multi-player games, and I look forward to playing it with him as he gets older.

The big excitement for toddlers comes for the out-size die – made from an old tissue box! Cover the box with white paper, and color in one dot on each side, in 6 different colors.

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Mark those same 6 colors on strips of paper – these are each player’s “score cards.”

Now give that big die a toss!

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When it lands, have your toddler tell you what color he or she sees, then select a matching pom pom. A roll of green, for example, means you can place one green pom pom on your score card. The first player to collect all the colors “wins.”

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Of course, Travis and I played a modified version, rolling and selecting pom poms, but we didn’t keep score. As mentioned, though, I liked introducing the idea of a board game to him.

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If you try this with a preschooler, I’d love to hear how the game goes in the comments!

Pom Pom Play

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toddler 24 (1)

I sometimes forget that the best games for a toddler might involve the simplest things. This game, which I’ve pulled out twice in the past week, is a huge hit and easy for us moms and dads to set up.

Save your next paper towel tube roll and tape it to a door or cabinet. Present your little one with a bag full of large pom poms and let them go to town!

Travis started out dropping the pom poms down the chute, as I expected, and that was fun in and of itself. But his two favorite variations on the game were trying to fill the tube from the bottom up:

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And, stuffing multiple pom poms down the tube at once, while crying out, “So many!” We’d squish them and then see how long it took for the clogged pompoms to get squeezed all the way down the tube so we could start pulling them from the bottom.

toddler 24 (2)

For slightly more intellectual play, I later presented Travis with mini pom poms in a muffin tin. Much to my surprise, he asked for tongs to move them from cup to cup, but when this became frustrating he had no problem using his fingers or a spoon. He clearly had some imaginative game going in his head, because he told me the pom poms were “still warm” and then “perfect temp” and that we had a to wait a few minutes, so I know he was imitating the way he plays with toy food (and also mimicking the things I say at dinner time, haha).

toddler 24 (7)

My favorite moment, though, was when he spied a blue in the green bin – and made sure to place it back with the other blue ones! When we had fun dumping all the pom poms out, (which of course we did multiple times), he would sort them back into the tins by color.

toddler 24 (6)

At long last, the concept of sorting!