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During this time of year our playtime is usually filled with lots of Christmas arts and crafts but I try to leave plenty of room for fun learning activities as well.
In this activity, my three year had lots of opportunity to develop and strengthen her fine motor skills decorating a Christmas tree made of squeeze pouch caps using tweezers and pom poms!
Cut a square piece of contact paper and tape it, sticky side facing up, to a table using the painter’s tape. Create (with or without your toddler’s or preschooler’s help) a Christmas tree (see picture below for reference). The contact paper helps to keep the caps in place while your toddler or preschooler is adding the pom poms.
My 3 year old and I created the caps Christmas tree together.
If you are creating the caps Christmas tree together, this is a great time to go over counting. Together you can counting the number of caps in each row.
We started making the tree from the top down and middle outwards.
Once the tree is complete you can give the jumbo tweezers to your toddler or preschooler and have them fill the caps with the pom poms based on colour.
The jumbo tweezers are great tools for strengthening the fine motor muscles in little hands. These muscles are required for the crucial pincer grasp that is necessary to hold pens and pencils later on.
Toddlers under the age of three may find the jumbo tweezers a little difficult to use at first so don’t be discouraged if your little one wants to use their fingers. They are still gaining the benefits!
After a while my preschooler wanted to use just her fingers as well. I didn’t force her to use the tweezers, the strength needed to use them for an extended period of time will come as she gets older. I will just keep introducing them in activities and giving her opportunities to use tools like these and eventually she will become more natural at using them.
