Tiny Tot Journey: Week 4 – Clothespin Puppets

In this week’s addition for my tiny tot, you will find a bedtime book, gross motor skills, fun after nap-time activity, and a fun arts/crafts activity! Look below to see what we have for you!

Bedtime Reading:

This week’s bedtime story was not something my tiny tot (20 months) enjoyed. We read Oh, the Places You’ll Go! by Dr. Seuss. He would only pay attention for a couple of pages. I think there are just too many words to listen to. However, I kept reading it anyway because I enjoyed the message in the book. To be honest, I do not remember reading this as a kid. Reading it as an adult now makes me have a lot more appreciation for the story. Even if my tot was not paying attention to the story with full attention, I am sure he heard some of it. Exposure to reading is important at this age!

Gross Motor Skills:

Continuing from our last tiny tot journey, our gross motor skill activity included balls again! My son loves balls, so we just sat down and rolled balls back and forth to one another, threw and caught balls with each other, and more. I wish I had not left my camera/phone at home when we went to a birthday party earlier this week so I could have taken a picture of this. My son found a ball and was rolling it along a bench slowly so that it would not fall. That must have taken a lot of work for my little guy to keep it balanced on the benches. This might be something you can do outside with your tiny tot if you have any benches outside anywhere!

After Nap Activity:

What little one does not like bubbles?! Every day after nap, we blew bubbles. My tiny tot had a blast trying to catch and pop the bubbles. He was also mesmerized by the bubbles that would land on the carpet or the chair and not break until he poked them. I tried letting him blow bubbles too but he ended up sticking the wand in his mouth. Maybe next time little guy!

Arts/Crafts:

For our arts and crafts, I let my son choose the color of construction paper he wanted to make for our clothespin puppets so that he was involved in the actual creation process. However, most of the fun was done after they were created! He loves birds and is always pointing them out in the sky saying “bird, bird” so we made bird clothespin puppets to play with!

Picking out colors

All you need is construction paper, clothespins, scissors, something to draw with, and glue. If you really want to get creative, instead of drawing on eyes you can use googly eyes.

My husband did this activity with our son. He cut an oval shape out of the construction paper my son chose for the head of our bird and then drew on a face with a colored Sharpie. He also cut out a triangle shape from another color my son chose for a break. I glued a piece of the beak on the outside top of the clothespin and the bottom beak on the inside of the bottom of the clothespin so that every time the clothespin was squeezed, the beak would open and close.

Holding it the wrong way (to open and close) but looking at their creation

The fun thing about these simple clothespin puppets are that you can make them into anything your child likes! It can be the face of a person with their mouth to open and close, a tiger or other animal, or anything your child desires!