Tag Archives: pom poms

Santa Hat Stacking Game

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Buddy loves to play games, so I decided to add “play a Christmas game” to our advent chain this week. (Read more about our activity advent chain here.) But I knew that I wanted an easy, low prep game, since the week before Christmas is always very busy. When I saw a Santa hat cup game on Lalymom’s blog, I knew it would be perfect.

This game is so easy and fun! I pulled out some miniture plastic cups that I bought awhile ago and some pom pom balls. Buddy loves playing with pom poms, so he was super excited to see them. The game is simple to play. You put a cup down and add a pom pom to the top to be the ball of the hat. Then the next person puts down his or her cup and pom. If your hat knocks down the tower, you lose. We have large tweezers in the bag with the poms, so we decided to use that to put the pom poms on the cups.

After we played our game, Buddy wanted to play with the cups and pom poms. He made “pies” by putting the poms in the cups. Then he had a lot of fun serving them.

This was a fun, seasonal game. We won’t play it year round, but I know we’ll try it again next December.

Merry Christmas from my family to yours! I hope you have a wonderful and restful holiday.

Fall Tree Pom Pom Painting

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I love doing seasonal activities, especially in the fall. When I first saw the idea of doing a fall tree painting on Crafts on Sea’s blog, I loved it. They did several paintings using different items as paint brushes. I liked the pom pom idea the best, and so did Buddy. There is a printable tree template on the blog, but I ended up just creating my own.

*Disclaimer- this post contains affiliate links for your convenience. As an Amazon associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.*

During Buddy’s nap time, I got the painting materials set up. I used a marker to draw a tree trunk and branches on painting paper. Then I put washable paints on a paper plate, and put a pom pom on the end of a clothes pin. I also pulled out Buddy’s paint smock.

Buddy was so excited to start painting. He loved the idea of using a pom pom instead of a paint brush, and he was very careful with it. At first, Buddy put one dot of paint at the end of each branch. But eventually, he started adding more and more paint everywhere. 

After awhile, Buddy wanted more leaves on the paper. I suggested that he put some on the ground. However, Buddy thought it would be more fun to make them falling from the tree. So there are a lot of leaves everywhere on the paper. 

Here is Buddy’s final picture. 

Buddy had a lot of fun, and it was so easy to clean up! I threw away the paper plate, and the pom pom clothes pin, and we were done! Since we didn’t use a real paint brush, I didn’t have to clean it out at the end of our activity! We both loved this activity, and I know we’ll try pom pom painting again.

Pom Pom Transfer Activities and Toss Game

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Buddy loves playing with pom poms.  (You can read about some of our other pom pom activities here and here.)  However, I had to put them away for awhile because Buddy wanted to put them in his mouth. Last week, I saw some new pom poms ideas on Busy Toddler, and thought it might be time to pull them out again.

One of the ideas on Busy Toddler’s blog was to use a multi-sectioned container and kid tweezers with poms. I bought a pair of kid tweezers at the dollar store this summer, but Buddy hasn’t been able to use them yet. I set out a multi-sectioned container, a snack cup, tweezers, and the poms for Buddy to explore.

Buddy was so excited to see the poms! He immediately poured them from the cup into one of the sections. Then he started taking them and putting them into different sections.

I showed Buddy that he could use the tweezers to pick up and move the pom poms. Buddy was very curious about the tweezers after he saw me use them. He tried a couple of times, but he wasn’t able to make them work.

After we gave up on the tweezers, Buddy just poured the poms from the cup into different sections. He also picked up poms and put them into different sections. He really enjoyed transferring the poms from one section to another. From time to time, he’d dump the whole container over and start again.

Next, we used the different sections of the container to sort the poms by color. Buddy is 21 months now, and he’s just starting to understand the idea of a color sort. We pulled out a few different colors and put them into different sections.

Buddy wasn’t all that interested in sorting the pom poms. He decided it would be a lot more fun to throw them around the room. Since Buddy wanted to throw the poms, I quickly made up a toss game. I said that we get a point for getting a pom in the container and five points if the pom gets in the center section. Buddy loved this game!

When we got a couple in the center part, I made a big deal about getting five points. Buddy decided he wanted to win the game, and he came up with his own plan. He put all of the poms in the cup and poured them directly into the center part. He was so proud that he was able to get so many in there! (I guess I wasn’t clear enough about the throw them in to get the points part of the rules.)

Buddy had a great time playing with his pom poms. He was entertained for more than a half hour, which I would call a success. (Eventually he did want to try eating them, so we had to put them away. If you do pom poms with a toddler, please supervise carefully!)  I’m sure we’ll try our game and sort activities again when Buddy is a little older.

I’d love to hear if you have any ideas on playing with pom poms or other materials in a creative way. I’m always looking for new ideas for our next play time together.

 

Best Toy Free Ways to Entertain a One Year Old

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Buddy just turned 17 months yesterday. (Where has the time gone?) As Buddy gets older, he’s become more vocal about his preferences. He wants to eat his favorite foods and nothing else. He wants to read the same books over and over. And he wants to decide what to play with. (Ah… life with a one year old.) The interesting thing is, right now, Buddy doesn’t really want to play with toys.

The bookshelf in Buddy’s room has four bins of toys. One bin has electronic toys, two bins have non-electronic toys, and the final bin has non-toys. Buddy’s current favorite bin by far is the bin of non-toys. (The electronic toys bin is his least favorite bin, which is interesting…) I’ve blogged about some of these repurposed-for-fun activities before, but I thought it might be handy to have several of these ideas in one place. I’m sure I’m not the only mom constantly on the lookout for new playthings that already exist in my house.

Pom poms

Buddy practicing pouring with pom poms.

Buddy practicing pouring with pom poms.

There are a million ideas on Pinterest for toddler pom play for a reason. Toddlers love pom poms. The cup of poms is usually the first non-toy of choice for Buddy, and we’ve played with them in a lot of different ways. We’ve pushed them into a snack container and put them through paper towel tubes. We’ve even done a small portable pom container on an airplane. Right now, Buddy loves pouring them into containers, on himself, or on me. He sometimes puts them into an ice cube tray and then pours them on himself. The trickiest thing about poms with this age is they look tasty, so they must be closely supervised. The rule at our house is if the pom goes in the mouth, they are put away for the rest of the day.

Pouring poms is so much fun!

Pouring poms is so much fun!

Straws and a water bottle

water-bottle-straws

Putting straws in the bottle requires a lot of concentration.

I go into more detail about this activity in this blog post, but I just cut straws down to fit in an old water bottle. Buddy can play with these for a long time. He loves the sound they make when they’re in the bottle. Sometimes, he hands the bottle to me to blow across, and he loves that noise too. This was a great travel activity for us last weekend. I always drink out a water bottle when I travel, so I just packed the straws and used the water bottle once I was done with it.

Lids and containers

container-hat

Wow! This is so much fun!

Sometimes we play with lids and containers together, and sometimes we play with them separately. Buddy loves putting things into containers and using them as drums or as a hat. He also enjoys trying to put the lids onto the container.

Playing with lids is a great high chair activity.

Playing with lids is a great high chair activity.

Pans

Listen to that noise! It's great!

Listen to that noise! It’s great!

We have an old cake pan and an old muffin tin that live in Buddy’s room. Usually we use the cake pan for magnet play, like we did in this Chicka Chicka Boom Boom activity. However, sometimes Buddy just likes to bang on it like a drum or put other things into it. The muffin tin is usually used for putting in balls or animals like we did in this activity.

Getting ready to pour out the balls.

Getting ready to pour out the balls.

Cotton balls

Look at these snowballs!

Look at these snowballs!

These actually don’t live in Buddy’s room because they leave lint all over the carpet. But they are a lot of fun, and Buddy loves playing with them. Usually, we do this as a transfer activity between two bins.

Water

Cups and water are so fun.

Cups and water are so fun!

We have played with water outside in our water table, as well as inside in pans. (The picture above is from our Making Rain activity.) Buddy is especially excited about pouring water out of a cup, and he can do this forever. It can get messy, but it’s always worth the hassle.

Of course, Buddy still  loves playing with actual toys, but most of the time, the above items are his first choice. If you have any other ideas for untraditional play items, please leave a comment. I’m always looking for new ideas.

 

 

Pom Pom Play

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I’ve been wanting to do something with pom poms for awhile. Since today is Try Something New Thursday, it was the perfect time to try playing with pom poms for the first time.

Buddy loves putting things in and pulling them out of containers. I’ve seen a lot of different variations of poms and containers on Pinterest, and I decided to use a snack cup to hold the poms. We have only tried to use this cup with an actual snack once, which wasn’t very successful. I liked the idea of reintroducing this cup as a toy, since it isn’t being used at all right now. Maybe later, Buddy will be more interested in using it to hold snacks once he’s used to it.

I took a couple of handfuls of poms and put them in a pile on the floor. Then, I handed Buddy the cup. He immediately started putting the poms into the cup. He started by putting one pom in at a time, but eventually got so excited that he started using both hands to shove handfuls of poms in the cup.

Pom Pom play 2

I didn’t think ahead of time about whether or not all of the poms would fit in the container. Luckily, they did, although it took some effort on Buddy’s part for the last two to go in.

Mom, this one won't go in!

Mom, this one won’t go in!

Once all of the pom poms were in the container, Buddy wasn’t sure what to do. He shook the cup to try to get them out, but they stayed in. He put his hand in, but he couldn’t get many out. I let him use his problem solving skills for awhile, but eventually I took the cup and poured out the poms. Then Buddy started over putting the poms back in the cup.

Pom pom play 4

After the second time the cup was full, Buddy decided to make up his own pom pom game. He took poms and lined them up on the bookshelf. Then he knocked them down. He kept doing this over and over for quite a while.

Pom pom play 5

This activity was a huge hit, and we will be doing this again soon! I highly recommend it to anyone looking for an easy idea to keep a little one entertained.