pompoms and Straws!
There are two items I keep handy just about all of the time. I really love to have them in seasonal colors, just because I find that to be a fun and easy way to immerse young children in whatever season or holiday we are currently living. Straws and pompoms are the big two, in my book. We use them for a hundred million things.
I was up nursing Baby B in the wee hours of the morning last week, when I stumbled across a giant pack of multi-patterned Christmas-themed paper straws (always paper, never plastic) on amazon (because what else would I be doing at 3am other than shopping online for things I don’t need?). They were super-inexpensive, and I was SO disproportionately excited because I was already imagining allllllll the fun learning activities I could do with the kids!
I kind of geek out about this stuff. I’m not sure if it’s my teaching background or just my personality (ha), but this is the sort of thing I text my husband about in the middle of his workday in all caps. I FOUND CHRISTMAS STRAWS TO USE FOR SCHOOL!!! (Remember, when I say “school” I mean the tiny group of Littles that I teach here in my home. I used to teach kindergarten but now I’m lucky enough to be home with my two youngest and a handful of their friends. We call it the School of Elise because I never managed to give it a better name.)
Partly, I’m geeking out in those moments, because I already know how many dozens of skills I’m going to be able to squeeze in for my kiddos to practice and explore and learn. I know exactly how useful those straws are going to be for a myriad of activities and how much my kids will learn from them. I also was superficially thrilled with the fun, shiny, Christmas-y colors and patterns! I also figured if I’M that excited about them, surely the kids will be, too!
This is all also true of pompoms. Such a silly little craft supply and yet SO VERY USEFUL AND FUN! I once flew from Georgia to Pennsylvania with my Big Girl, who at the time was an only child and had just turned 2. I didn’t have much space to pack toys and where we were headed had no toys. I packed pompoms and books. And it was all we needed for the week we were there!
Read on friends, to see what I mean…
Things to do with Straws:
Free play: I always start with free play when introducing a new material. Even if they are not totally new, if we haven’t had them out in awhile, I start with free play. I’ve seen kids use straws in so many ways when I’m not directing them! They make shapes (you can support this by casually counting the sides of the shapes and naming them and making your own shapes) and letters (same - you can name the letters and their sounds and make your own). They often enjoy lining the straws up, sometimes end to end to make a big long line, or sometimes upright like tally marks (there’s a fun way to use straws for math for an older kiddo - use them to make tally marks and count them in groups of five!)
Ramps: This one is entertaining even for me! We have built ramps out of cardboard, chairs, books…many things can become ramps! Straws are perfect for experimenting with rolling down ramps. Last week, I watched a 12-month-old figure out how to start the straws at the top of the ramp and let them roll. I sat back and watched, and she worked through it all by herself. It was fascinating to watch her problem-solve!
For slightly older kiddos, you can experiment with making ramps steeper. This is a great opportunity to encourage them to make predictions - “what will happen if you make this end of the ramp higher?” etc. This can be used as an opportunity to practice measuring too. As you tilt one end of your ramp higher or lower, measure how far the straws roll! So much math, engineering and physics built into such a simple activity!
Blow feathers: Use your straws to blow feathers or pompoms across the floor. Kids can race them to a finish line or follow a track. You could even tape a maze on the floor or build one out of legos!
This is a great time to practice taking deep breaths and filling their lungs up with air and then blowing it out through their mouths - which sounds really obvious (like, yes Elise, that’s exactly what they are doing) BUT hear me out…taking deep breaths is one of the best ways to calm our nervous systems when we are upset.
However, telling our young children to take deep breaths in the moment when they’re already melting down is VERY rarely effective. What is more effective is practicing those deep breaths in calm moments. Straw-and-feather races and mazes are the perfect chance to practice.
Bracelets: This one is mostly a fine motor exercise. I’m always fully in support of a good fine motor activity; we try to fit some fine motor work in every day. Straw bracelets are SUPER simple: your child cuts the straws into little pieces and strings them onto some sort of string or ribbon, which you then help them tie. Ta-da! A bracelet!
You could also do some patterning with these. Your child can continue a pattern you have started, or create their own as they get a little older.
Size order: We just made very pretty little christmas trees by cutting up straws and putting them in size order. This is such a great math skill! Use the opportunity to introduce or practice vocabulary like longer/shorter/wider/narrower/larger/smaller, etc.
Drumming: Straws make top-notch drumsticks! Since it’s December, we used them to drum along to Little Drummer Boy, but obviously any music would work. This is great for teaching rhythm and patterns. You can have them repeat your rhythms, create their own, match the beat in a song…pretty much endless options and fun! Such a fun musical connection. This is SO great for building neural connections - check out my music page for more info on that.
Bend them and use them as tongs: Speaking of fine motor activities, this one is AWESOME. This was actually inspired by watching them explore during some free play with straws. If you bend a paper straw in half, it works PERFECTLY as tongs! Tongs make for some of the MOST excellent fine motor skill work. All of those finger and hand muscles have to work together, AND you have to coordinate the visual side of it as you try to make those tongs pick something up. Pompoms, coincidentally, are ideal for this activity.
Things to do with Pompoms:
Free play: Again, I always start with free play. When they play with pompoms, I usually provide spoons, bowls, and muffin tins. There is scooping, dumping, mixing, pouring…lots of great wrist motion with those spoons!
It requires some degree of fine motor control to scoop up a pompom with a spoon. They enjoy using regular-size muffin tins and also mini-muffin tins for this.
They particularly enjoy filling bowls up and dumping them over each others’ heads like snow or rain. And cramming them all in their shirts and pretending to be pregnant, both activities which are as hilarious as you’re picturing…but also are some types of high-quality dramatic play!
Sorting: Sorting is an early math concept and pompoms lend themselves SO well to practicing! Pompoms come in all colors and sizes, and there are sparkly and non-sparkly options, so they can be sorted according to several different sorting rules. Children often end up doing this themselves, but some guidance isn’t a bad thing either. You can model it yourself or narrate when you see them doing it. The muffin tins are the perfect place to sort and categorize!
Dump trucks and shovels: Sometimes I don’t do spoons and bowls, sometimes I do shovels and dump trucks. It really just gives them some different inspiration for dramatic play. (Speaking of dramatic play and pompoms, they are also entertaining when added to a kid kitchen - excellent pretend cooking material!)
Math: Pompoms are a cheap and easy manipulative to use for counting, patterning, addition, and subtraction. You can also add a roll of the die and a tens frame to very easily reinforce some number sense.
Roll the die, count the dots, place that many pompoms on your tens frame (always top-to-bottom and left-to-right). Clear and repeat!
Both straws and pompoms end up being my favorite type of material: cheap, zero prep, versatile in the extreme, and visually appealing. You can grab them and invent an engaging and educational activity in basically zero minutes, which is always a win in my fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants book. (Which sort of sums up this season of my life. Besides, extensive prep is ridiculous.)
I would LOVE, LOVE, LOVE to hear your ideas for using straws and pompoms with children. How do you play with them? What crafts do you make? (I didn’t even touch on that here!) Games? Lessons? What are you doing out there?
Also, I’d be equally thrilled to hear what materials you use that fall into my favorite afore-mentioned categories: cheap, zero prep, versatile, and pretty. What do y’all reach for regularly in your play and learning?