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This is a few ideas I’ve seen all put together. I’d seen pom poms glued to magnets before. You can make all kinds of cute animals, etc using pom poms. And I saw somebody on Pinterest using a oil drip pan as a magnet board. Genius! I had been looking and looking for a big metal pan for you to play with magnets on. Cookie sheets are too small, and I couldn’t think of what else would work (and not be unsafely sharp on the edges). I’d even looked in thrift stores to see what kind of random solution I could find. Well, thank you Walmart. $9.95 for the pan site-to-store. Just had to go to our local Walmart to pick it up! Of course, there are all kinds of magnet games I want to get now.
But this was the one I was most interested in implementing first. You loved the magnets. You stacked them and were fascinated by the fact that they stick together and pull apart over and over again. We hot glued pom poms of various colors and shapes to little magnets (found them at Michael’s). The magnets were a little pricey (about $7 per 25) so we started out with 50. First we stuck the magnets on a smaller broiling rack I had (my no-bake cookie sheets aren’t magnetic) to make it easier to keep track of the magnets and keep them from sticking to each other. Then I let you help me stick the pom poms on the (low heat) glue. Of course you liked throwing the pom poms on the ground too. We had a bit of a (10 minute) battle getting you to agree to help me pick them up when we were done – before you were allowed to move on to other mess making. You are getting more and more stubborn. But we usually can outlast you…. for now. 🙂
This easily ties the pipe cleaner/strainer activity we did in terms of entertainment factor for you. You LOVE it, and have played with it every day since we put it together. The idea is that you can make pictures using the various color pom poms. Of course you’re a little young for that yet, although Mima showed you how to make a smile and I made you pretty flower. You found that slightly interesting. Really you’re quite content just sticking the pom poms up there – at first randomly, now your favorite thing to do is to make snakes, long wiggly lines. I think you might think you’re making monsters. You growl and rawr a lot when you’re doing it. 🙂
Of course this is also a great way to keep working on your colors. I think you know most of them now. The thing is you only cooperate when you feel like it. If you don’t feel like grouping the colors together, you won’t. But you’re getting pretty good a it when you want to. Yesterday we grouped colors together for a while until you took over. Then I just sat and watched. You’d take one color and add it to a “snake” of like colors one at a time. But you usually would put the pom pom on the wrong color snake first and then say “noooo” and shake your head, and then slide it over to the right snake. Super cute. 🙂
The next thing after we master colors (and hopefully you won’t lose interest in this before we get there) is patterns. Red, white, red, white, etc.
Oh, one other thing… Mima tried to show you how to throw the pom pom magnets at the board from a distance. Kind of like pom pom darts. That could be fun when you’re a little older. Maybe I’ll make a bulls-eye with some painter’s tape. hmmm…. I like that idea.
Loves, baby girl. Muah.