Tag Archives: pipe cleaners

Fun With Pipe Cleaners

Leave a reply

When I first saw the idea for a bird feeder made with pipe cleaners and Cheerios (found here), I thought it would be a fun and easy activity. I’m always looking for new activities for Buddy using materials I already have at home. Last weekend, Buddy and I made one together.

I decided to do this activity after snack time to minimize Buddy’s desire to eat all of the Cheerios. Unfortunately, I learned that Buddy always has room for Cheerios! When I asked Buddy, he said he wanted to make a bird feeder. However, it turns out that he was more interested in eating. For every Cheerio that was put on the pipe cleaner, he ate three full handfuls! Buddy did enjoy putting the Cheerios on the pipe cleaner, but once the rest were gone, he was upset that he couldn’t eat them off the pipe cleaner.

Buddy was excited to see the pipe cleaners.

Yummy Cheerios!

Buddy needed a little help to keep the pipe cleaner still enough to put on the Cheerio.

When all of the Cheerios were gone, I made the pipe cleaner into a circle and hung it on a tree in our backyard. I haven’t noticed any birds on it yet, but there aren’t too many birds around right now. We might have to try this one again when it’s a little warmer, and when Buddy learns a little more self control around Cheerios.

Although the bird feeder activity didn’t turn out exactly as I’d hoped, we found other fun things to do with pipe cleaners this week. Buddy had a lot of fun making pipe cleaner bracelets, putting them on, and taking them off.

We also played with the pipe cleaners and a colander like we did in this blog post. Buddy loves counting right now, so we counted pipe cleaners as we put them in and out of the colander. We also talked about colors of pipe cleaners. I asked him to find a certain color of pipe cleaner, and he tried pull it out of the top of the colander. (He knows red and orange, but he needs help with other colors.) It was a fun variation on the activity that we’ve done before.

Overall, we’ve had a lot of fun this week with our different pipe cleaner activities. (And I’ve also learned that Buddy’s not quite ready for food related crafts!) I’ve put them away for now, but I’ll definitely pull them out again the next time I need a good distraction for Buddy.

Repurposed for Fun: Colander Activities

2 Replies

I love when I can find new activities for Buddy using materials I already have at home. Today, I pulled out an old colander of ours for playtime. (This idea originally came from Powerful Mothering’s blog here.) To start, I gave Buddy a bunch of pipe cleaners in the colander, and let him explore the materials. It’s been a long time since we’ve played with pipe cleaners, so they were new to him.

Buddy enjoyed pulling the pipe cleaners out of the colander and bending them.  Then he put most of the pipe cleaners back into the container. When he saw that one of the ends had poked through a hole, I showed Buddy how to pull the pipe cleaner through it. Then, I put a bunch of pipe cleaners in the holes, and Buddy had fun pulling them out.

After awhile, Buddy decided he wanted to try to put them into the colander holes himself. This was a little challenging for him, but he worked at it for a long time. I’m sure when Buddy is a little older (he’s almost 21 months now), he’ll be better at this part of the activity.

At one point, Buddy decided to flip over the colander to pull the pipe cleaners out of the other side. I loved seeing his creative thinking!

After awhile, Buddy took out all of the pipe cleaners, and he decided it would be fun to play peek-a-boo with the colander. There was much laughter involved in this game because he could see me through the holes!

Buddy played with the colander and pipe cleaners for more than 20 minutes, which is forever in toddler time. Eventually, he needed a new activity. I decided to pull out a bunch of his small balls to put in the colander. These were a combination of our Bright Start balls, Munchkin bath balls, and other balls we happened to have (affiliate links).

Buddy had a great time putting balls in the colander and spilling them out again. Sometimes they went all over the room, but sometimes they just stayed in a small pile. He chased them all over the room and threw them back into the colander.

These activities took absolutely no prep time on my part (hooray!), and there was very little clean up involved. Even better, they kept Buddy occupied for about 40 minutes. We both had a great time, and I’m sure we’ll do it again.