pipe cleaners | Roaming Rosie

DIY Fine Motor Skills Craft for Toddlers with Pipe Cleaners at RoamingRosie.com

I like to make homemade activities for my girls by recycling things we have around the house.

We use pipe cleaners {or chenille sticks} fairly often, so we’ve always got those on hand. I usually get them at the dollar store.

For this project, I used 4 pipe cleaners and cut them into inch-long pieces with a pair of strong scissors.

Then, the goal was simply to put them into an old spice container.

This is the type of spice container that holds dried herbs, like parsley or oregano. You’ll notice the top has only 6 large holes.

It’s a great way to work on fine motor skills and helps with prewriting skills.

The only drawback to this is that the metal inside the pipe cleaners can be a little sharp. There are a couple of ways around this. One: ignore it. And two: use pliers to curve over the very ends of the metal pieces, making sure that the sticks still fit through the holes in the spice container.

We chose option one.

Really, it’s not terribly sharp and you can insert them without pushing the ends anyway if you manipulate the pieces by holding them on the fuzzy part. Or pushing gently, which is what I showed my girls.

Or, if you’re really worried about it, you could just use pieces of yarn instead.

My favorite part is that all the little pieces fit inside the container, and, thus, it is self-contained and easy to store.

For more kid activities using items around the house, check out:

Practice Measuring with Rice

Painting With Chalk

Our Colorful Backyard: Color Matching Activity for Kids

Blustery Day Water Play

Free Kid Activity: Developing Fine Motor Skills with Crayons

Pretend Play: Makeup

Free Kid Activity: Chalk on Construction Paper

Free Kid Activity: Painting Newspaper

Make Your Own Color Shadows

Dirt Soup: In Contact With Creation

Have fun!

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Crystal Snowmen | Borax Christmas Ornament Craft

I love how these crystal snowmen catch the light of the low winter sun.

These snowmen are our version of the traditional borax Christmas ornaments. I used white pipe cleaners (chenille sticks) to represent the snowmen: one per ornament/sun catcher.

Crystal Snowmen

The above photo shows how we made them. They were pretty easy for my 3-year-old to help with.

We took one stick and made it into a circle, twisting the ends around each other to seal the shape. Then we twisted it a little over a third of the way up to create the bottom circle of the snowman, and again to create the torso and head.

Crystal Snowmen

I tied some thread to the top of the snowmen and wrapped that thread around the handle of a spoon that fit over a wide, 1 liter measuring cup. You can do just one ornament in a smaller glass, but I wanted to do two at a time.

Make sure you have a enough room to hang the snowmen, then take them out of the glass. Fill the glass with water and boil it in the microwave, or add boiling water from another source. Mix in the borax and stir gently, then put the snowmen back in. Let it sit overnight. Done!

You’ll need:

pipe cleaners (chenille sticks)
thread
4 cups boiling water
1/2 cup borax

After sitting overnight, dump out the water. If the crystals that formed on the snowmen attached to crystals on the bottom of the glass, simply chip them gently away with a fork. Then, unravel the thread from the spoon and tie a loop to attach to suction cups for a window or a hook for a tree ornament.

What kind of borax ornaments have you made?

And don’t forget to check out these other Christmas crafts: