Macaroni - OTPlan

Noodle Tower Thread

Steps:

Use the hole puncher to create several holes across the cardboard surface. Ensure the cardboard is stable.
Place the uncooked spaghetti sticks into the holes, creating tall, thin towers. Push them in just enough to stand up straight.
Put the macaroni pieces into a plastic container. Challenge your child to pick up one macaroni piece using a pincer grasp.
Carefully slide the macaroni onto the top of a spaghetti tower. Continue threading until the tower is full of “noodles.”
Try grading the task by stacking multiple cardboard layers for more resistance during step one.

Safety Tip:
Always supervise to ensure small materials are not put in the mouth. Ensure the cardboard stands firmly on the table for safe play.

Feed Me

In this activity, imagination and creativity are key components.

Begin by drawing the face of a child, a character (clown, robot, princess, etc.), or an animal that the child likes on the shoe box’s cover. Then, cut out the mouth of your figure so that it looks like the figure is opening its mouth. Make sure the opening is big enough so that the child is able to place the small objects through the opening.

Place the cotton balls (see additional ideas for objects below) on the table in front of the child or in a shallow bowl.

Give the tongs to the child and instruct her to hold it with her thumb, pointer, and middle fingers only, while tucking the pinkie and ring fingers into the palm of her hand. Then, ask the child to use the tongs to pick up one object at a time and feed the figure by placing the object into the figure’s open mouth.

This is where creativity comes into play as you can use the child’s imagination to decide what kind of food the cotton balls represent.

If you chose to draw an animal, you can have the cotton balls be the type of food this specific animal eats (i.e. monkey = bananas, dog = bones, bunny = carrots, etc.)

Based on the child’s developmental skills, you can have her draw the figure (can be a very simple figure) and cut the mouth opening independently.

Additional ideas for small objects (depending on the child’s age and abilities): pasta, beads (large and small), beans, cotton swabs, marbles, and Lego

Can You Feel It

Fill up a large container or a bucket with beans, rice, macaroni, sand, or birdseeds (you can mix a few media together if you wish to).

Let the child put his/her hands in the container and pour, sift or move the media from side to side.

When using bird seeds it is recommended to powder the child’s hands with some baby powder to keep the birdseeds from sticking to the palms of the hands.

Mixing small plastic shapes, plastic letters and numbers, small plastic animals and any other educationally related items in the media can be a fun way for the child to develop his/her stereognosis sense.

Mac and Shake

Poke a hole in the container’s lid.

The hole should provide enough resistance to make it challenging for the child to insert the macaroni inside.

Have the child insert large macaroni one at a time through the hole in lid into the container.

To work on finger translation, ask the child to collect two macaroni pieces at a time and store one in his/her palm while inserting the other into the container.

The child should use one hand to hold the container and the other one to insert the items.

Children enjoy listening to the sound the container makes when they shake it.

This activity can be done using other items such as coins, beans, or smaller macaroni.

Touch and Match

For the purpose of describing the activity, we chose beans and foam sheets. You can use any media you would like to fill up your container (i.e. corn kernels, cotton balls, macaroni, bird’s seeds, send, etc.)and any objects to hide (i.e.buttons, pom-poms, pegs, coins, etc.).

Use the foam sheets and cut pairs of different shapes (you can also use different color sheets and cut a pair of the same shape in each color). Fill up the container with the beans. Hide one shape from each pair inside the container and place the other shape in front of the child.

Have the child dig his hands through the beans and find the matching shapes, taking them out one shape at a time.