Sorting and Patterns with Pom Poms

by Meghan

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Believe it or not, this is actually an activity Big M evolved all by herself at just 2 years old!  I had purchased a giant bag of assorted Christmas pom poms at Michael’s to stock the craft closet for the holidays.  We first opened it to use for our Santa’s Beard Christmas Countdown!  This required her to sort the pom poms both by color and size.  We used the small white ones for Santa’s beard, but then she wanted something to do with the rest of them…

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Shopping List:

Assorted pom poms
Small, child-safe sorting containers

Cost: Less than $5

Prep Time: Less than 5 minutes

Clean-Up Time: Less than 5 minutes

Every morning, she would eat breakfast, glue on a piece of Santa’s beard, and then ask to “do patterns!”  I stored them all together in a big ziploc bag, so every day, she would have to sort the pile into the three containers.  Her sorting category of choice was color, but you could also sort by size or texture (some were of the wirey, sparkly variety).  As you can see by the wardrobe changes, we did this for many, many mornings.

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When she mastered sorting, I tried to incorporate a greater fine motor skill challenge by asking her to pick them up with salad tongs for sorting…

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They may have been a little to large for our pom poms!

Then, at the suggestion of my brilliant mother, the multi-decade kindergarten teacher, she taught her how to make patterns via FaceTime.  She LOVED that game.  I would start the pattern, then ask her “What comes next?”  Big M thought this was genius – and would test it out on Daddy at night.

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Green, white, green, white… What comes next?!

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Santa's Beard Christmas Countdown - Playground Parkbench November 29, 2014 - 9:47 pm

[…] I initially found the countdown template on Pinterest.  You can download and print it out for free here.  I got a large bag of assorted Christmas colored pom poms at Michael’s… which worked out great, because it gave us an extension activity – Big M had to sort out the small, white pom poms for the beard.  We saved them in a small plastic bowl for easy access each day.  She enjoyed it so much, that every morning she asked for more pom poms and created an activity all on her own – Sorting and Patterns with Pom Poms! […]

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