Open-ended fun with Velcro craft sticks

Velcro craft sticks

So I’ve had this in my to-do list like … erm, let’s just say, for a very, very long time. I finally got down to making these velcro craft sticks for the kids – and I’m so glad to share with you it took me no longer than 5-10 minutes to dig out my craft sticks in the colours I wanted and add in the velcro dots.

Not sure how the kids would take to these, I decided to just make a pair of each of colour – and it’s really great that these were rainbow-coloured too!

Little boy didn’t really know how to match up the velcro dots so that they would stick so after awhile, he let his sister do the building.

With my girl, we talked about more shapes like the pentagon, hexagon, octagon etc., how many sides the shapes have, while we stuck to simple basic shapes like the square, triangle and rectangle with my boy.

I didn’t really direct how they should use these sticks and left it mainly up to them at first and realised that my girl formed shapes and played with creating patterns (e.g. blue, purple, yellow, blue purple yellow).

When my boy was alone with me while his sister’s at school, I got him to match the pairs according to the colours, and we talked about colours (you could discuss this in another language too – for us, we used Chinese). Since we had 1-1 time, I also taught him about the rough and puffy sides of velcro and how he should match them up so it was also a sensory activity for him as he touched all the velcro dots and told me whether it was rough or soft. He especially loved to dangle the sticks stuck onto each other in mid-air. Actually I also noted that aiming to let one velcro dot match up with the other took some judgement and fine motor skill so this is quite a good activity for toddlers. *no photos for these activities and observations as I didn’t want to disrupt his learning*

The kids also extended the activity on their own one fine day by taking out their beanbag turtles – in the exact colours – and matched the sticks to the turtles and eventually the craft sticks became swords for the turtles, and a war ensued. 🙂

If you have any more extension activities for these craft sticks, please drop me a note! 🙂

Other sensory activities:

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the day the crayons quit

 

This entry was posted in Fine Motor Skills, Homeschooling, Sensory play, Teaching English, Teaching Mandarin, Teaching Math. Bookmark the permalink.

9 Responses to Open-ended fun with Velcro craft sticks

  1. Summerbabies says:

    Hi! May I know where do I purchase Velcro dots?

    • simplymommie says:

      Hi, I bought mine on eBay. I haven’t managed to find any small velcro dots in Singapore but cutting velcro tape into pieces would work too.

  2. Adeline says:

    Such a creative idea, that seems very easy to make! Will bookmark this for future reference, when Noah is old enough to play with these. Thanks for sharing. 🙂

  3. Rebecca says:

    I can see these would have lots of different uses. What a great idea.

    I’ve featured this on The Sunday Showcase this week:

  4. Yang Hoon says:

    I’ve been searching around for the materials. Not able to find the velcro dots.. Where did you purchase the craft sticks? Thanks!

    • simplymommie says:

      Hi, I got my Velcro dots from eBay. As for craft sticks, even stationery shops carry them these days! If u can’t find them at Popular bookstore, try craft shops like Art Friend and Spotlight.

      • Yang Hoon says:

        Oh thanks! Popular sells only ice cream sticks, which are too narrow.. where can i find Art Friend? Those multi-colored craft sticks, the colors do come off and stain your little kids fingers?

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