Pinspired~ Fine Motor Skills for Toddlers and Preschoolers

I have had the joy of staying home with my girls this week and have been looking for some neat activities to do with them. I remembered a few months back I had found an idea involving pipe cleaners and strainer for my preschooler. I picked up some pipe cleaners last week(Jo Ann fabrics by the way couldn't find them at regular mass merchandise stores such as Kmart and Target).

Here is my preschooler placing both sides of a pipe cleaner through the holes of the strainer. She absolutely loved it and thought it was so much fun (as I truly believe learning should be).I also asked her colors as she was putting them in so we could practice those.

I don't know how many of you have multiple children, but we have 2 girls and my younger daughter always wants to do what her sister is doing. She is 16 months old so I took a smaller bowl and a few pipe cleaners and gave them to her to use. You will notice the bowl she is using  has narrow long slits opposed to small individual holes. This bowl worked great as it gave her more "wiggle room" to put her pipe cleaner through. She was unable to use her sisters bowl when she tried at the end but had no problem with this smaller one(for me it was the bowl out of my Pampered Chef Berry Spinner).

This is a simple $1-$2 activity that teaches your children while keeping them busy. My kids loved this idea and I just straightened the pipe cleaners out so we can use them again on another day.