Daily At Home Project: Pom Pom Wall

by | Apr 7, 2020 | At-Home Enrichment | 0 comments

Please find below our daily SolBe Family update letter containing helpful resources and exciting projects to explore while we all do our part to stay home during this pandemic. Subscribe here to receive daily updates.

April 7, 2020

SolBe Families,

Check out this lovely piece from Tinkergarten on Building and Fort Play. If you are going crazy inside your house, building a fort is an age-old activity. Have the kiddos tap into their building and engineering minds and enjoy a pillow or couch fort! With one more day of sunny weather ahead, we would also encourage their “Time Out for Tea” nature walk idea. Click this link for a fun way to mix up your afternoon walk/adventure.

Project of the Day for All Ages: PomPom Tube Ramp from Toddler Approved.  This was recommended by Nathalia from Brown House Uno!

The students in our infant/toddler class enjoyed this project at school!

“MATERIALS NEEDED FOR A POM POM WALL

  • paper towel tubes (or gift wrap tubes)
  • scissors
  • colorful cardstock or paper
  • painters tape
  • pom poms (all sizes)*

Objective

Children will be able to use their problem-solving skills and work on fine motor skills.

Note

If your child still tries to put everything in his or her mouth use large pom poms only!

Why make a pom pom wall?

This activity was inspired by our popular number tunnels activity. These kids loved making the number tunnels and could design them with only a little help, so we decided to take the activity vertical and see how it would work. The kids loved using their problem-solving skills to design the course.

Pom poms seem to be the best materials to use with the tunnels on our walls. Softballs could also have worked or even bouncy balls. We had hundreds of pom poms on hand, so that was an easy choice!

How to make a pom pom wall?

Start by grabbing some paper and cutting it in half. Tape pieces to the wall with a little bulge in the middle to make tunnels. You can also make long pieces of paper into colorful tubes to stick on the wall.

We also used paper tubes, but the paper “make your own” tubes and tunnels were more popular because you could decide how wide or thin to make them.

How do you play with the pom pom wall?

Once your tunnels and tubes are stuck to the wall, this is a great time to pass over the pom poms and sit back and watch what the kids do.

They may try sticking giant pom poms down itty bitty tubes. They may start dropping only yellow pom poms down the yellow tube… each kid will be different. 

Take time to watch and see the problem solving and experimenting happen. Don’t be too quick to jump in and help kids solve problems. 

If a big pom pom gets stuck in a tube, encourage your kids to brainstorm how to get it out.

How can you sneak in learning?

You don’t really have to. So much learning is taking place as the kids try putting the tubes and tunnels at different angles and attempt to use different sized pom poms.

If the kids don’t ever start matching pom poms to tunnel colors, you can always model that by putting a yellow pom pom down a yellow tube and remark, “Look! The yellow pom pom went down the yellow tunnel.” Sometimes kids think that is cool and run with it and repeat it, sometimes they’d prefer doing their own thing. Both are great. 

More resources to follow in the coming days. Feedback and more ideas welcome, as always! 

Be well and stay healthy!

The SolBe Team


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