Poking Pom Poms

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We've been working on learning to color, and have not been having a whole lot of success. I decided that maybe we needed to work on Erik's fine motor skills and hand strength before moving on to Crayons. After looking around online and thinking about it, I decided this little activity would be quick and easy to put together and hopefully do the trick.

So, let's gather our supplies:

-An empty container (in this case a sour cream container I'd washed out)

-Some pom poms (I bought a pack like these and just used the largest size, saving the rest for later activities)

Start by cutting a hole in the lid of your container. The smaller the hole, the more challenging the game so maybe start with one just smaller than the pom poms. The hole needs to be big enough that the pom pom's fit easily, but not so big that they fall right through. I started with a smaller hole, but when that proved to be too frustrating, I made it bigger a little at a time until it seemed to be just right. 

Erik loves to push the pom poms through the hole until his container is full, then I dump them out for him and he starts all over again. It takes hand-eye coordination to line the pom pom up with the hole, and some hand/finger strength to push it through. 

After more than a week of playing with this as often as he wants (which is pretty much as often as I'm willing to sit and dump them back out) I can see visible improvement in his ability to do this task. He started out having to really work to line up the pom pom, and he really had to push hard to get it through the hole, but now he just pops them right in. As soon as I have another similar container empty, I'm going to cut a new lid with a smaller hole so that this toy will continue to challenge him. I love that is was so simple and cheap to make, but has provided hours of learning fun for him.

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