Blowing Pom Poms with Straws- A Color Matching Activity

Today I have another pom pom activity for you, this one for the 2+ year olds. If you are looking for something for the younger toddler, be sure to check out the Egg Carton Pom Pom Push post if you missed it earlier this week.

I’m all about reusing the materials we already have at home, so one bag of pom poms can last us a long time. I’m talking months to years if we aren’t gluing them. Did you know you can wash and dry your pom poms? If they get dirty in a sensory bin or some other activity, toss them in a garment bag or tied pillowcase and wash (I try for a gentle cycle, but it doesn’t always happen) and dry them.

Being able to reuse materials makes it most cost effective and eco-friendly to set up activities for the kids. Keep reading to get the scoop on this awesome and simple activity for the kids.

color matching activity for kids straw blowing pom poms to paper

If you are looking for a simple set up and no mess activity, this is for you!

Here’s What You Need

Pom poms
Straws- we have reusable ones that came with a great brush for cleaning
Construction paper
Tape
Bowl- optional

materials for activity straw, colored construction paper, tape, pom poms

Set up

1-2 minutes

Select pom poms and find colored paper that matches. You can scale this to have only 3 colors if needed for younger children, but we used 8 and it was just right for a 3- and 5-year-old. If you don’t have colored paper, you could always draw circles with colored markers on white paper.
Arrange your paper on a table or the floor and tape it together. Tape the whole arrangement down so it doesn’t blow away.

Clean Up

1-2 minutes

Gather all the pom poms. You can limit the number of pom poms out, so clean up should be very easy.
Reuse the paper for coloring or toss it.
Wash your straws or throw away the disposable variety.

The directions for this activity are short and sweet. Have your child use the straw to blow the pom pom to the correct color paper. That’s the whole activity! I’ll share more about what we did, but you can keep it as simple as that.

We made this sort of a challenge/game, but there was no scoring or winners. I intended for the pom poms to be used one at a time and each person could pick the color they wanted to aim for every time. The kids wanted to keep all of the old pom poms on the “board” and we ended up with pom poms flying everywhere, but it was hilarious. We were all cracking up and it was a great way to spend time together. If you child might get upset about the flying pom poms, have them focus on one color at a time and take the old pom poms off the board.

You could add an extra challenge to this activity for older children by adding numbers to certain areas. For example, add a circle on the yellow paper and write “4” inside, indicating they are aiming for 4 yellow pom poms to end up in that circle. For older children, adding addition, subtraction, or multiplication problems in the circle could be a way to have fun with math.

Let’s chat about using the straw. Blowing through a straw is a skill your child might master around 2-3 years of age. Ellette is just shy of 18 months, so although you might see her hands peeking in some of the photos, she wasn’t part of the official activity. In fact, her main role was pushing all of the pom poms onto the floor when her older sisters weren’t looking, which she found hilarious even if her sisters did not.

Learning to blow through a straw can be a great oral motor activity. Oral motor means how we use the muscles inside our mouths. We use this specific blowing pattern for things like blowing bubbles and speech. I am definitely not a speech expert, so chat with an SLP if you want to know more about the motor planning that goes into speech/sound production.

Using a straw gives immediate feedback to kids if they are not creating the appropriate seal with their lips. It can help with tongue position (as a PT I believe this can be linked to stress and relaxation abilities), improve muscle tone in the mouth, and work on breath support and volume of speech. I’m sure there are many other benefits, so do some reading if you want more information. The main point here is blowing through a straw has a lot of benefits for children and I like that it is easy and requires no special equipment.

We started our pom poms on the white part of our table and each turn involved blowing through the straw to move the pom pom to the desired colored paper. Our papers were in a rectangular shaped pattern, but you could put them in straight line to make things easier.

This activity was fun for the kids for a few reasons:

It was novel. We have done a few straw blowing activities previously, but maybe only once or twice a year. They were fully anticipating a fine motor activity when I got out the pom poms and were very surprised when I showed them we would be blowing through the straws.
The pom poms were all different sizes, so it took a lot of planning and adjusting to get the right amount of pressure through the straw to get the pom pom moving without flying off the table.
It was goal oriented. My children love color matching and you could clearly see when you had achieved the goal.
Turns were quick, meaning they didn’t have to wait very long for the other person to be finish.
Nothing was “used up” when it wasn’t their turn. Sometimes with paint or beads, there is a finite supply of the material available. We have our fair share of squabbles about someone using “all of the paint”, but this activity eliminted that issue completely.
They had the opportunity to cheer each other on! We worked on nicely asking if the person moving the pom pom wanted suggestions and then calmly offering an idea to try or a different angle to point the straw. It warmed my heart to see the girls working together so well.
We were all laughing…eventually. The first turn went swimmingly, but after they made the decision to keep all of the pom poms on the board, we had a few rounds of people being upset that their colors had gotten blown off. I kept reminding them that would happen, and we could choose to put them back on or take them off to avoid the issue. They finally came around and accepted that the pom poms would get moved every turn. Eventually they were shrieking with laughter when a big gust would come through and blow all of the pom poms off.

After about 15 minutes, they were tossing 5+ pom poms on the table and trying to move them all at once, which ended in none of them reaching their target color. The kids had so much fun and played with this for over 20 minutes before I interrupted for lunch time.

This activity was so simple to set up and provides so many benefits for the kids, such as color recognition, oral motor skills, and an opportunity for teamwork. This could be great for a group of kids if you were hosting a play date or birthday party, but is just as fun with one or two kids at home. I had to ask if I could sneak a turn in because it looked so fun and I felt like I was missing out! So join your children, because it was totally fun and gave us a great bonding moment.

I’m really not sure how I gave you more than just 3 lines about this activity, but there you have it. Beyond easy and guaranteed to be a blast! Let me know in the comments how you arranged your papers- straight line, all separate, on the floor, on a table? I love hearing from you and knowing that I’m able to share a fun way to interact with and teach your children really does fill my heart!

Seriously go try this. We all could use a little more laughter in our lives,