Homemade Toy: Pipe Cleaners in a Bottle

This activity is a huge winner.   I once read about giving toddlers spaghetti pasta to fit inside empty spice containers in the “Toddler Busy Book”.  I tried this first (with an empty water bottle since he was too young to fit the spaghetti in the tiny spice holes) but the spaghetti kept breaking and then I was worried he’d try to eat the pieces.  It just didn’t work with J so young.  So I changed the activity and gave him pipe cleaners with the empty bottle instead.  I twisted the pipe cleaners in half so they were more sturdy and bent the ends around so they were safe.  J loved loved loved this.  It is definitely in the top 10 toys he owns.  I now include it when making a  Busy Box for 1 year olds.

It’s a great activity to help little ones practice motor skills.  The length of the pipe cleaners makes it more difficult to fit inside the bottle than a puff ball or anything small enough to fit into their hands.  J often tried to hold the bottle in one hand and the pipe cleaner in his other hand so it required steady hands (something he did not have at first!)  As he’s gotten older and in better control of his muscles I’ve decreased the size of the mouth on the bottle.  He now uses an empty parmesan container with the holes in the lid or a plastic lid that I punched holes into.  I’ve also seen an activity online that colored around each hole to encourage their toddler to match the colors during the activity (though I can’t remember where!).  I liked that idea, but haven’t used it yet.  It would definitely increase the difficulty. 

It’s funny how we don’t realize all the skills we had to master in order to do things like pouring, sorting, threading, etc. It’s fun watching J learn these things.  This is one of J’s favorite activities between ages 11 months and maybe 18 months.  

      

It’s a perfect plane activity since it keeps him occupied for so long and is so light to carry while traveling.  In fact, he just enjoyed this toy on our plane ride this morning at 22 months.  Again it’s light, keeps them busy for an extended time and the pipe cleaners can be used for other things (make jewelry, letters, shapes, chains, threading,…).

Age attempted: I can’t remember exactly when I first introduced this; I know my neice is able to do it at 12 months right now.

Teachable Moments:  In and Out, show them how to hold the bottle still while moving the pipe cleaner, fine motor skills, color matching,

Try Again?  He is still intrigued at 23 months!  I made the activity more difficult as he got older.

 

Here’s the cuter version I made for my neice.  I just punched holes into the top of an Empty Puffs container.

Homemade Toy – Sponge Curlers

You may have seen this post describing J’s homemade version of stringing beads.  Well, of course you can use the sponge curlers as they come as an easy toy to encourage more practice with fine motor skills.  Often changing just one aspect of an activity makes it seem brand new to J.  So sometimes I pull out the plastic pieces that the sponges came with and J matches the correct color sponge with the (we have two sets pink and black).  Cutting the sponges into halves or thirds obviouslylengthens the task and gives him more practice at stringing them.   It’s also a good way to emphasize size. 

23 months

We haven’t  done this activity yet, but you could first have organize the sponges by size before threading them.  Talk about how many are necessary to fill up the curler peg…. when you’re threading the smallest size, the medium size, the largest size sponges.  When he’s much older this could be a great hands on activity for whole, half, and thirds.

Age Attempted: 23 months, could’ve done this earlier

Teachable Moments:  Encourage them to thread the correct color sponge on it’s matching peg; encourage them to fill up the peg (size)

Try Again?  Yes, it can grow with J

Homemade Toy – Stringing Sponges

In one of my trips through the dollar store, in search of cheap, light weight “toys” to keep my toddler busy on planes, I came up with this version of stringing beads. 

I bought a couple packages of sponge curlers (the kind some of us slept in when we were little).  They came in black and pink in our dollar store.  I took them home and sliced some in thirds, some in half, and kept others the full length.  I keep them in a small wipee box with some pipe cleaners.  The sponges are perfect to string on the pipe cleaners.  I think it’s a little easier for them use the pipe cleaners than regular string, making this activity possible at a younger age.  Wealso make jewelry with them or link them together to create a chain (thought J needs a lot of help with that).

23 months

This makes a good plane/travel activity because it keeps them occupied for awhile, it reuses the same materials from other plane activities (so you have to pack less), and it’s lightweight.  The disadvantage is that the sponges can be decidedly fun to throw around on the plane (but at least they don’t hurt if they hit you and they’re cheap, so it’s not terrible if some are lost).  This works well for J now at 23 months; our first experience with this plane activity (at 14 months) didn’t go as well.   

Age attempted:  14 months (too young for on the plane), better by 18 months and good at it by 23 months

Teachable Moments:  We’ve worked on the meaning of push and pull with this.  You can make patterns with the different colors, practice counting by assigning a different number of sponge beads for each pipe cleaner

Try Again?  This is usually an activity I either bring on the plane or have in the hotel; it is saved for those events to keep it’s novelty but still gets used fairly often

Clean “Painting”

Our most recent activity included construction paper and water and it entertained J for 10 minutes easily which is quite a feat at this age.  I added some sponges and got another 10 minutes…then added ice and got 5 more minutes out of him. This was SO easy, required basically NO prep work, and less clean up than after a meal.

Our color of the day was green, so I gave him a piece of green construction paper and a small dish of water. I showed him how he could “paint” with his finger and he began his masterpiece. He then painted with the sponges and ice. He had a blast. We got to talk about wet and dry.  I did have to add a second piece of paper since the first became rather water logged. Unfortunately my artist’s hard work dried by the end of naptime, so nothing to show off to dad.

I’ve heard of mom’s using paint brushes for this, but I didn’t have any that were small enough.  We do use some larger ones to paint the deck outside with water, so that’s an idea.

17 months

Age Attempted: 17 months; I should’ve done this one much earlier. I think he could’ve enjoyed this as early as one year.

Teachable Moments:  Talk about wet and dry, the color of paper he’s painting, paint lines/dots/shapes/letters

Try Again? Definitely.  We have since added paint brushes to this activity.  I use thisas a quick go-to activity on extended family trips to visit Grandparents since it really only requires some construction paper.