Bottle Cap Rainbow Pom Pom Fine Motor DIY

This is a fun DIY to reuse your milk caps and create a festive St Patrick’s Day inspired Rainbow fine motor activity.

You will need: pom poms (we are loving these glitter ones), recycled caps (use bottle caps, milk caps or even yogurt pouch caps), a glue gun and tongs (optional).

How to make it: glue blue cardstock over a rectangle piece of cardboard to resemble the sky. Draw with a pencil a thin vertical line in the middle of your blue cardstock to have a middle line for symmetry. Then, starting at the bottom, glue horizontally seven caps to the right and seven caps to the left since there are seven colors in a rainbow. You will then glue the identical number of caps on each side of your middle line for each ray. Thereafter, offer your child colorful pom -poms to fill the rainbow.

Smaller children (age 1-2 yo) will enjoy using hands and fingers to transfer pom poms, while stimulating the tactile sense and practicing a pincer grip.

Offer tongs to children [2-5 yo] to further exercise dexterity, and your 6+ yo might even attempt using chopsticks.

A child can do this activity as many times as s/he wishes. There are just two rules: follow the rainbow colors (one color per ray) and proceed from left to right. ‘Left to Right Progression’ is a very important concept that is not innately/naturally learned and is often overlooked. It is the concept of writing, reading, counting and more. With regular practice, your child will acquire this skill, which will help in many areas including literacy and numeracy.

Variations: Discuss rainbow colors (we had to substitute violet and indigo – official rainbow colors – for purple and pink pom-poms). Ask: “How many colors are in a rainbow?” Seven! Offer your child to count how many pom-poms are on each ray. Alternatively, you might show your child a pattern to replicate: as simple as AB (repeating just two colors more than once) or a more complex one such as ABCD or ABBCCD. Also, don’t forget to take a step back and observe: what would your child choose to do with the material provided?

See this post on Instagram here.

Please, always supervise your children while they are S.T.E.M.-ing through play … Xoxo

For more hands on fun, see here St. Patrick’s Day Inspired Unit Study.