Material: Clothespins

Hang Up a Pattern

Hang Up a Pattern

On an index card or a piece of paper, draw a pattern of colors, letters, or numbers (you can also mix the symbols).

Draw the matching symbols on the bottom part of the clothespins.

Place the index card and the clothespins in front of the child. Ask the child to hold the top part of the hanger with his non-dominant hand.

Review the pattern with the child first, then ask the child to use the dominant hand to find the clothespin that has the first symbol in the raw.

Instruct the child to place the clothespin he found on the hanger, reinforcing him to use pincer grasp to open the clothespin, and crossing his mid-line by placing the clothespin on the opposite side of the hanger (i.e. if the child is right hand dominant, he will start placing the clothespins on the left side of the hanger).

Have the child continue following the pattern, placing all the matching clothespins on the hanger.

Strengthening Clothespins

For this activity, you will need colored clothespins in 4 different colors or if you have wooden clothespins you can color them or mark them with 4 colors.

The colors should match the color of the construction paper.

Cover the containers with construction paper. Let the child choose a color and then roll the dice.

The child is then asked to place the clothespins on the edge of the matching colored container.

If the dice rolled 1, have the child place 1 clothespin on the edge of the container. If the dice rolled 2, use 2 clothespins. Etc.

This activity can also be done in a group as part of a game where each child has 1 container and is playing to get as many clothespins on his container in an allotted time.

Mixed Clothespins

For this activity, you will need to use 4 different colored clothespins.

Use the markers or crayons to paint each edge of the cardboard in one color.

Mix the clothespins.

Instruct the child to order the clothespins by matching the edge color to the clothespin color. The child should be using a different finger for each clothespin color (i.e., thumb and index finger for a yellow clothespin, thumb and middle finger for a red clothespin, thumb and ring finger for a green clothespin, and thumb and pinky finger for green clothespin).

For grading place all mixed clothespins on the cardboard and ask the child to pick them up and re-attach it to the right edge.

Push Ins

Start by making the shoe box and the cardboard discs. Cut a narrow slit on one side of the shoe box top and a small circle on the other side. The narrow slit will be used to insert the discs and the small circle will be used to insert the clothespins.

On the cardboard, draw 10 or more circles, about 3 inches in size. Cut out the circles and attach a clothespin to each circle.

Have the child separate the clothespins from the discs and insert the items through the right opening on the shoe box.

You can also place stickers on the circles and matching ones on the clothespins. After the child inserted the items, ask him to take them out of the shoe box and match each circle with the corresponding clothespin. You can also color the circles and the clothespins in different colors, and ask the child to match the items by color.

Stickplane

Use the wooden sticks or craft sticks as the airplane wings.

Let the child paint or color the sticks with markers and decorate with stickers.

Once sticks are dry, instruct the child to glue on stick at the bottom of the clothespin and one stick at the top.

Using pincer grasp, instruct the child to pinch and open the clothespin while placing the third wing in the middle.

You can have the child glue the middle stick or do not glue the middle wing to allow the child to practice his grasp by removing the middle stick for a two wing airplane model.