The other day I needed to empty the dishwasher and though it is a task that Zayd and I can usually do together, he was having NONE of it. He was, however, interested in the tongs we had just washed and wanted to get out his sensory bins to work on picking up hidden treasures like we normally do. I wasn't about to rice it up in the kitchen so I got creative. I threw our clean dishrags on the floor, gave him two clean bowls and the tongs and let him have at it. He used the tongs to pick up the rags one by one and put them in the bowl. He used the tongs to transfer from bowl to bowl. He practiced pouring from bowl to bowl. If he were a bit older we could have sorted the blue rags from the brown ones, the options are endless. Best of all, he is entertained, learning, and right underfoot with NO MESS.
We have played with the tongs everyday this week. Here he is finding sticks outside and bringing them to me. Then we got to work on sorting and talking about BIG! and little. He loved it! He will be grasping a pencil in NO TIME!
What else can we do with tongs?
What about sorting smaller things into egg cartons? Seeing how far you can carry something tricky without it falling? Passing something from one set of tongs to another? How many can you pick up without dropping any?
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