Meat Tray Sewing

I had an absorbing task to do the other day (finishing a painting for a friend's little girl) and I needed to sew some detail onto it. Now, Eden likes to copy everything I do so normally I'd wait until she was asleep to do this. This time, however, I had a different approach: teaching Eden how to sew!

I grabbed a meat tray (side note: keep your meat trays, they're so handy and they make the best paint palettes) and punched a few holes through it with a skewer. Then I threaded a wool needle with some red yarn, tied it off, and handed it to my lil girl. Look at this:

Pipecleaner Threading

*This activity is for older toddlers who no longer put things in their mouths*
I set Eden up with a shaker from the kitchen (could also be a parmesan cheese shaker, or a colander, or a sieve), and some pipecleaners and a bag of hair beads (children of the 90's, remember these?). I didn't even need to direct her at all; she immediately began putting the pipecleaners into the holes in the shakers, arranging and rearranging them until she was satisfied. Then she threaded the beads onto the pipecleaners. Of course, this was the object all along, but I was thrilled that she had figured it out for herself.

She asked me not to pack it away that night, because she wanted to play with it in the morning, and in the morning she went back to it, continued to thread the beads onto it, and declared that this was her 'pretty bird'. So I made a 'beak' with yellow paper, wings from extra pipecleaners and put some blutack on the back of the beak and on the back of some googly eyes. She stuck them onto the shaker to make a face, and taped the wings on. Voila! Her 'pretty bird' is finished and ready for play. I twined the tips of the pipecleaners together to stop beads from flying off as she slid it around the table.

This activity is an opportunity for your tot to use their creativity, imagination, and their emerging fine motor skills. I thought you could also make the pipecleaner-ed shaker into a girl: twist the ends of the pipecleaners over so the beads don't fall off, then bend the pipecleaners down for hair, add a face and  there you have it! Make a few, and you've got some puppets who can interact (further stimulating your child's imagination).

This post has been linked to Monday Madness over at Art For Little Hands

From Threadings to Mobile

This is what we ended up making with Eden’s threading: a mobile. I got a plastic hanger and tied the threadings to it, then I got Eden to wrap masking tape around the knots to secure them. Voila! So easy to do. At the moment this is hanging in her bedroom on her cupboard door, but I’m hoping to do a few more of them with her and extend the mobile a bit more, to hang above Ava’s change table.

Makings of a Mobile

  

Threading is a great activity to develop hand-eye co-ordination as well as fine motor skills and, in this case, creativity and can be introduced as soon as your child has the requisite motor skills. This version is definitely, an activity for older tots though.
I was impressed at how well my daughter threaded these items together! I sat with her and did a strand myself, as I find my involvement, or at least my presence, always helps her stick to an activity for longer. She really enjoyed the different textures and choosing which pieces to use and she took it very seriously, her little face intense with concentration. She also enjoyed having her grandparents watch what she was doing, but they weren't allowed to touch! We are going to do a few strands, and then tie them to a hanger to create a mobile, which we'll hang above my baby daughter's change table.
All you need is to provide a safe needle (I offered two types, a blunt wool-needle and a piece of pipecleaner shaped like a needle - she chose the wool-needle), wool or yarn, and some threading materials. In my containers were:

• large buttons with big holes
• cheerios and nutrigrain (cereal)
• penne pasta
• mini patty pans with holes punched into them
• colourful cardboard shapes, squares, circles, etc, with holes punched in them
• bits of cut up lace
• hair beads
• paper clips

Next time (which will probably be tomorrow) I'll try and make some strips of paper into beads by rolling them around a pencil and glueing the end down. It adds another creative step to our threading. I'm also going to cut up some small-ish squares of thick cardboard (from nappy boxes) and punch holes in them. You could use this activity to create jewellery (swap the wool/yarn for some clothing elastic to create rings and bracelets), mobiles, streamers, and I'm sure a lot more things that I haven't thought of. 

One tip if you're going to try this activity: take one piece of the largest, sturdiest item (in our case, penne pasta) and tie the end of your thread around the item. It saves you from trying to create a giant knot to stop it all falling off the end. Have fun! ~ L.