Pipe Cleaners - Page 13 of 16

Plate Cymbal March

Steps:

Gather two paper plates (one for each hand). Help your child practice using the hole puncher to create 4 to 6 holes around the edges of each plate. Remind them to hold the plate steady with one hand while punching with the other!
Take three pipe cleaners and twist them together tightly to create one thick, sturdy ‘handle’ for each plate.
Help your child thread the pipe cleaner handle through two opposing holes on the plate edge. Twist the ends of the pipe cleaner handle securely on the front of the plate so it won’t slip.
Once both plates have handles, encourage your child to march around the room, clapping the ‘cymbals’ together. Marching helps them integrate both sides of the body while providing great sensory input.

Safety Tip:
Always supervise children when using the hole puncher to prevent them from putting fingers inside the mechanism or attempting to punch clothes.

Fuzzy Stick Postbox

Steps:

Take a sturdy piece of cardboard (like the side of a shoe box) and, using a pencil or pen, carefully poke several holes across the surface. Make sure the holes are just wide enough for a pipe cleaner to fit through easily.
Present the cardboard ‘postbox’ and a pile of brightly colored pipe cleaners to your child. Encourage them to pick up a fuzzy stick with one hand and hold the cardboard steady with the other.
Guide your toddler to push the pipe cleaners through the holes, acting as if they are “mailing” the sticks to the other side. Encourage them to try different hole locations to increase motor planning demands.

Safety Tip:
Since this activity involves small, flexible materials, adult supervision is required at all times. Pipe cleaners can pose a choking hazard for children under 3 who may mouth objects.

Button The Shapes

For this activity, you will first need to create the button container using plastic containers with lids. Use the scissors to pierce a hole in the lid.

Take one button and insert a 3-inch pipe cleaner through 2 of the button holes.

Insert each edge of the pipe cleaner through the lid hole that you pierced and twist the 2 edges together on the bottom of the lid. This will hold the button in place on the lid.

Close the container with the lid so the button is at the top of the container.

Using a marker, mark a shape on the container.

Cut out pieces of felt in the same shapes that you marked the containers with. You can also use fabric for this.

Using the scissors, cut holes in the middle of each shape.

Provide the child with the button containers and the felt shapes. Ask the child to sort the felt pieces and button them on the right container marked with the matching shape.

For grading, you can use different sized buttons or you can also use one container with no marked shape and have the child follow a pattern from a visual model (i.e. button a circle, a triangle, and a rectangle in a repeated order).

DIY Abacus Counting Frame (Rack Rack)

This activity provides many benefits while creating the abacus and while playing with the finished product.

To create the abacus:

Use 2 toilet paper rolls or cut a paper towel roll in half.

Use the pencil to mark and puncture equal height dots on each paper roll. The pipe cleaners will be attached there.

Cut the pipe cleaners to be equal length. Each one should be about 6 inches in length.

Insert one side of the pipe cleaner to the top hole on the paper roll.

Put 10 beads on the 1st pipe cleaner, and repeat these last 2 steps until you put all the pipe cleaners in the holes, and string all the pipe cleaners.

Insert the other end of the pipe cleaner into the 2nd paper roll.

Let your child be a part of putting this together to promote pincer grasp, bilateral hand use, and eye-hand coordination.

Don’t have pipe cleaners? Use a string instead.

Don’t have beads? Use Cheerios or buttons.

While playing with the abacus, the child gets to practice these skills as well.

Candy Cane

For this activity, we used colorful paper straws and cut each straw into 1-inch pieces.

Ask the child to string the cut straw pieces onto a pipe cleaner.

Bend the top of the pipe cleaner to shape it like a candy cane.