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
Fun & Engaging Activities for Toddlers 