100 (Attempted) Ways to Entertain a Young Toddler, Day 91: Pushing Pom-Poms

Today's activity comes from the Fun & Engaging Activities for Toddlers blog. She found it from another blog, so it's been passed down a few times. I decided I would try it and see what the kids thought.

What you need to make this toy:

* An empty & clean plastic container. She used a margarine container, and I used a yogurt container.
* A knife
* Scissors
* Permanent marker (various colors are optional)
* pompoms (available at your local craft store)

After cleaning and drying my yogurt container, I used a sharp knife to carefully poke holes into the lid. I worried the edges were sharp, so I used scissors to round out the holes as best I could. The holes were almost impossible to see on the clear lid I used, so I used a Sharpie to outline the holes. If your kid is older, you might outline holes with different colors. Your child can then put the yellow pompoms into the yellow hole, the green pompoms into the green hole, etc.

Once your toy is made, just give your kid pompoms and let them poke them into the lid!

Joanna loved this activity! She picked it up right away and enjoyed poking pompoms into the lid over and over. I think her excitement was contagious because Oliver wanted to play, too. We only had four pompoms (I can't find where I put the rest of them), so Oliver would take the lid off the container, dump it out, and separate the pompoms so they each got two. He put the lid back on, and then they'd push their pompoms through again.

I wasn't expecting this toy and game to be as fun as it was. They loved it and played for about 20 minutes.

We've played a different version of this game in the past. I keep an empty travel wipes container, and Jo enjoys dropping letters into it (like a mailbox). Pushing pompoms into the holes was a bigger hit.

Pros: Easy to make, simple, cheap, fun, keeps kids busy
Cons: Need supplies, possibly sharp

This took all of 5 minutes for me to make. The container is its own storage, so it's easy to tuck away for a rainy day. It kept both my kids (3 years, 4 months old and 16 months old) happily occupied. I'm thrilled! This is something I plan on keeping and pulling out whenever we can't leave the house for illness or weather. It gets an A.