Pom Pom Grasping, Sorting, and Transferring Activity for Valentines Day

Whats On The Shelf?

A Pom Pom Sorting Tot Tray

Items:
Valentine container filled with red, white, and pink pom poms.
Containers for sorting, red, white, and pink.
Tongs for grasping and transferring.
Spoon for scooping and transferring.  (These tool items were in the toy box, they were part of a veterinary kit the kids plays with.  They were pink, small, and I thought they would be easy for them use to grasp the pom poms.)


I used this activity with my three year old daughter and two year old son.



First, she practiced reaching into the valentine container to grasp pom poms with the tongs.  Then she transferred the pom pom she pulled out to the matching colored container.  I noticed she kept counting to five and then would start over with her numbers each time she reached five pom poms.  She did this on her own, I did not ask her too.  We had been practicing counting to three this month, even though she know up to twenty verbally.



Then she practiced scooping with the spoon to get a pom pom and transfer it to the color matching bucket.



She had no trouble matching her pom poms to the right color of container, but some challenge in grasping the pom poms with our little plastic tools.  They were short and didn’t allow for enough reach at the right angle to retrieve the pom poms very well.

The task became very simple for her once I realized she needed a lower container to hold the pom poms so she could hold her scoop more horizontal and her pom poms stopped rolling off. 



Then little brother practiced his grasping and transferring skills.



This is a great activity to practice fine motor skills, concentration, color sorting and discrimination, transferring objects, eye hand coordination, counting, and more.  This activity also reinforced the letter “P” and two of our vocabulary words for February including pom pom and pink.  You can read about the Letter Of The Week here.

This activity could be adjusted for older children, by adding in dice and having the children place the correct number of pom poms in the containers based on the number on the dice.  Use two dice, and two pom pom colors to practice addition or subtraction skills.  When done, graph how many pom poms you ended up with for each color or graph for each roll of the dice.  I think I might make a printable to use this with the older kids.  Stay tuned…..


How do you use pom pom activities to teach concepts to your kids?  Leave us a comment.  Thanks!