Pompom Fun

This is by far one of my children's favorite activities to do. I often have them do this activity at the kitchen table while I make dinner.

AGE RANGE
12 months and up. This is for toddlers and older. You child just needs to be able to tell two different colors apart and be able to sort them. She doesn't need to be able to say the name of the colors, just recognize that they are different.

SKILLS DEVELOPED

• Sorting
• Colors

SUPPLIES

• Pompoms in various colors. For the young toddler, use no more than three.
• Containers to put the pom poms in (one for each color and one to hold them all). I just use tupperwear.

PREP

1. Gather your pompoms.
2. Gather your containers.
3. Gather your children.

ACTIVITY

1. Put the pompoms for your child to sort into a container, all mixed together.
2. For younger toddlers, put one pompom into each container. For examle, if you were doing red, blue, and yellow, you would put on red into one container, one blue into another, and one yellow into another. For older children, you can let them start it out of you want.
3. Have your child sort the remaining pompoms into the containers.

VARIATION

• Use pompoms the same color and have your child sort by size.
• Once your child is good at colors, use shades of the same color (light purple and dark purple).

PHOTOS

Here are the pompoms ready to be sorted for Brayden and Kaitlyn.

Brayden working on his sorting

Kaitlyn working on her sorting

I used to store the pompoms in a bag. This wsa good for storage, but it took a long time to sort everything out in the beginning.



Now I keep them in little bags inside the big bag. At the end of the activity, everything is sorted, so it is easy to keep the pompoms stored this way.

TIPS

• Don't use too many pompoms. When you first start this activity, use just a few of each color. Add more as your child's attention span increases. What I show here for Brayden and Kaitlyn would be too many to start out with at first.

CREDIT

I got this idea from The Toddler's Busy Book (see Book Review: The Toddler's Busy Book for more on this book).