Egg Carton Pom Pom Push- Color Sorting for Toddlers

Here in Michigan, we are hopefully in the home stretch of winter and spring will be here very soon. I’ve always been a firm believer that winter can move along immediately after Valentine’s Day, so I’ll be eagerly waiting for the 50 and sunny days.

Today’s activity can help get you through the remaining chilly days and is perfect for entertaining toddlers. With only a few basic supplies, you can have a great way to practice color sorting, encourage new words, and give your little one some fine motor practice.

This activity is low cost and so simple! Save an egg carton this week and you will be on your way to loads of fun.

Here’s What You Need

Pom poms
Egg carton- the cardboard variety works best.
Markers
Bowl- optional
Scissors- adult or kid version, depending on who is doing the cutting.

Set up

1-2 minutes

Cut a hole in the bottom of each egg well. I flipped my carton over and pushed the scissors through, then gave them a twist. The holes are definitely not perfect, but that gives some resistance and doesn’t let the pom poms fall through.
Color the outside of each well according to your pom pom colors.
Create the invitation to play. I’ll describe more below.

Clean Up

1-2 minutes

Gather all the pom poms. Your toddler might love this part, leaving very little for you to do, but this only takes a few seconds even if they end up all over the floor.
Throw away the egg carton or save for another round of this activity.

I had some help from the big sisters for the cutting and coloring steps, so I encourage you to enlist older children in the prep work for this activity. I was honestly surprised at how much they wanted to make this for their little sister. Vaila also loved playing with this at nearly 4 years old, so don’t limit this activity to the littlest ones in your house.

After you have your egg carton colored, set out the pom poms in a container. I find having a container helps corral the pom poms, assists with maintaining focus and the predictable aspect of where the pom poms should be/where they belong after we are done with them. Plus, if you can get your child to put all the pom poms in a container, the clean up is lickety split!

Can we all admire Ellette’s blueberry-stained hands in all of these photos!

Ok, let’s talk about the invitation to play. I started by getting down on the floor with Ellette and showing her how to push a pom pom through, while essentially sportscasting my actions. That might sound like:

"I’m picking up the blue pom pom.”
“Where should we put the blue pom pom?”
“This hole is red. We are looking for the hole that is blue.”
“I found the blue hole!”
“I’m going to put the blue pom pom on top of the blue hole.”
“Then I push, push, push.”
“Where did it go?”
“It went down.”

If you child is older and knows how to sort by color already, you might not need to spell it out in such detail. Ellette is still getting the hang of this type of activity, and she is still working on color and direction words right now, so over emphasizing my actions helps her get a handle on what I’m doing. I speak less some rounds and more other rounds, depending on how much she is talking and how much help she needs.

If your baby is still little or not quite grasping color sorting, you can always place the pom pom on the correct color and demonstrate how to push it down through the hole. Hearing you talk about colors and leaning the cause-and-effect of pushing the pom pom through the hole can be a great introductory way to approach this activity.

As much as I wanted to just set out some pom poms and walk away, Ellette isn’t there just yet. She still needs some encouragement to stay engaged with an activity like this and benefits from more consistent demonstration of how to perform an activity. Showing her and verbalizing the colors is beneficial to her at this stage, so my laundry and dishes had to wait. I’m working on accepting my value and importance in these seemingly small moments, but it isn’t easy. Every few minutes I had to resist the urge to get up and get something “real” accomplished.

I simply had more time when Brinley was this age and it was easier to devote my full attention to activities like this. It is a constant balancing act between the needs of each child, keeping the household running, running my PT business, and trying to take care of myself. I’m still not sure how to balance Brinley needing my help reading, Ellette needing to learn how to talk, and Vaila working on her articulation all in the same hour. Some days each child gets 10 minutes of my undivided attention, some days I’m lucky that I didn’t set dinner on fire and we barely get one book in before bed. If you have the answers, or even a hint, I will gladly take whatever advice you can give! For now, I’m going to keep going with the notion that this chaos is just the fullness of life with little children and all parents feel this tug of war with their time and attention. You definitely are not alone if you feel something similar.

Vaila also loved this activity, but she didn’t need any prompting. This would make a great travel or car activity for her because she is fully independent. We were even able to sneak some speech practice in with the color names, so I was feeling like a million bucks when a 2 minute set up entertained 2/3 of the children for 30 minutes.

Opening the egg carton after about 10 minutes of pushing pom poms through was also a delight for Ellette! She loved collecting all of the pom poms from the egg carton (and from the floor after she threw them everywhere). She carried her little container around and put every last pom pom in it, only to dump it out again. It was not necessarily part of my activity plan, but still gave great practice in fine motor control, cause and effect, focus, and attention span. So don’t fret if your little one loves to dump out and pick up over and over again, they are just growing their brains.

This activity requires only a few simple supplies and will provide so much fun for your toddlers, and preschoolers apparently. Now you know just how easy it is to make this low-cost color sorting egg carton in only a few minutes, so get some pom poms and save your egg carton this week!

Drop a comment below if you plan to try this and what age your child is. Brinley is nearing 6 and generally still likes color sorting, but she was drawing a monster of some sort while we were playing with the pom poms. I do plan to save this and bring it in the car on our next hour long drive to visit Ryan’s family, so I’ll update you.

Wishing you a week filled with sunshine and color,