Everyday Items as Awesome Toys – CLOTHES CLIPS

Everyday Items as Awesome Toys – CLOTHES CLIPS

The awesomeness of everyday items in play should not go unnoticed. In this article we will explore one such common item ( Clothes Clips)  and learn awesome ways to enhance learning with it.

Clothes clips comes in all sizes , colours and shapes. This is the reason it makes them a very attractive and wonderful object to make your child learn a lot. Plus they are very easy to spot in every household. We need to just make sure that these clips have smooth ends and the spring in them is not very tight to hurt the child ( look for easy push clips).

Let’s begin the learning !!!

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1. Improving Fine Motor Skills

• Put few clips in a glass/ bowl and ask the child to pick clip one by one and put it in another jar ( kept near by). You can make this activity even more interesting by filling the empty jar by water ( coloured water) and the child drops in the clips in water. This activity will also help your child to improve his/her attention.

2. Colour concept

• You can use some poster colours, cotton and clothes clips to make colour learning a fun for your child. Put few colours on a plate, clamp a cotton ball in the clip. Dip the cotton ball in a colour and show him/her to make a colourful dot painting!!

• Gather all the clips on table and put two or three bowls next to it. You can put different colour clips in different bowls and let the child know the colour “ here i go, i am putting red colour clip in this bowl. Can you help me finding the other red colour clips? ” and the child gets them.
• You can also do the sorting in different colour bowls / jars. “ look this bowl , its red colour. Can you please find a same colour clip ? we need to put it in this bowl.” You can use these kinds of jars illustrated.

3. Recognising different clothes

Make the child help you putting clips on clothes hung up on clothes line. Give her/him clips one by one and go along the clothes line with them in your lap. “ let us put clips on these clothes, so that the little birdie doesn’t take them away !! ” you can instruct the child saying-

• Put clip on the shirt
• Put clip on the top
• Put clip on the pants
• Put clip on the frock
• Put clip on the socks/ sweater

4. Recognising Family members

Put a string across ( according to the child’s height), and give them the photos of the family members. Ask them to hang the pictures of all the relatives one by one –

• Clip on papa’s picture/ mumma’s photo/ grandma’s , grandpa’s photo

5. Understanding emotions

• Hang the smiling face / hang the angry face/ winking face

6. Understanding opposites

Learning opposites is very simple for the young ones with these fascinating colourful items. I myself have taught many like ( in/ out, open/ close, down/ up) to my daughter using these.

• In/out- let your child put clips in the box, let her/him take the clips out one by one. Like – “ name” please put this red clip in the box.

• Up/down/ under – similarly asking child to put clips up the table/ chair etc. Next you can ask the child to put the clips under the table or chair. You can also hide the clothes clips under a cloth and the child will find them.
• Throw / give ( the child throws the clips one by one when mumma says its play time, and gives the clips one by one when mumma says its work time !!)
• Similarly concepts of Thick/ thin, Big/ small, open/ close can be taught using various different clothes clips.

7. Counting

Clothes clips can be a colourful, yet wonderful, object for teaching counting to your child. You can use paper plates or glasses for this activity. On the plate/glass put the numbers ( in writing or dots/ lines). Let the child count & put those many of clips as depicted on the same.

8. Time Concept

Yes, yes, yes!! You can make your get through understanding what time the clock is ticking through clips too!! Just need a cardboard cut into a circle, 12 clips, thumb pin and paper cut arrows (depicting hands of the clock.) cuddle up with the child and together make a clock for him/her. This can clear your child’s concept from the beginning (just make sure not to give the thumb pin to them). On the circle write the numbers and let the child put the clothes clip of the same number on the written numbers.  Then pin up the arrows and your clock is ready !! tick tock tick !!

All these activities will help you to expand your child’s language and also help them in improving fine motor skills (most importantly the pincer grasp).

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