Pom Pom Sorting Activities

When I was a classroom teacher, I acquired a large amount of colorful craft poms to use with my students.

Over the years, I discovered a variety of different ways to utilize pom poms in developmental activities for younger kids as well as educational learning games for older learners.

In our homeschooling, the learning fun with craft poms has continued!

If you don’t already have a little stash of assorted colored poms, I would highly recommend grabbing some.

You can find them:

• at your local craft store
• in nearby dollar spot
• here on Amazon
• at a thrift store or yard sale – That’s where I always seem to find mine!

Grabbing an assorted batch (various colors/sizes) will be the perfect way to get started!

Next you’re going to want to gather various containers that can be used for educational play!

You can even use plastic or paper bags as your containers.

I found these colorful sandwich bags at Walmart.

These bags are Great Value brand.

They’ve been fun for snacks-on-the-go, and perfect for learning activities like this!

Pom Pom Sorting: Tools to Use with Them

In an effort to contain the pom poms, I use Melissa & Doug trays that have come with various M & D wooden toys we have purchased over the years.

However, any kind of kid-safe tray will work just fine!

Using a small tray of some sort simply helps to make cleanup a little easier.

Along with the tray, we also suggest using:

• small plastic cups/containers
• ice cube trays
• silicone molds/trays

IKEA, The Container Store, Amazon, or your favorite dollar stores are all great places to find containers that will work for you!

Throughout this post, you will see a variety of other hands-on play tools that pair perfectly with craft poms.

Pom Pom Sorting: Fine Motor Skills

When working with young kids, I love any opportunity to engage their motor skills.

Many children will enjoy dumping, scooping, pouring the pom poms in and out of the containers!

As they engage in this type of sensory play, they will have no idea they’re actually doing big developmental work!

Fine Motor Tools also add another great opportunity for learning and growing.

Tools that strengthen the hands of the user help to build a fantastic foundation for a child as they look ahead to to writing, drawing, playing an instrument, and more!

These kid-friendly tweezers are perfect for this type of fine motor fun.

Non-Slip Bathtub Dots Idea

Did you spot that bathtub gripper dot?

You can challenge your learner to use tweezers and place a craft pom on each little suction cup on the bottom of the gripper.

This is such a fun and challenging quiet-time activity!

You can also use the water dropper from this set of fine motor tools to try to see how many drops of water you can get on each of the suction cups.

For some younger kids, this activity can be a bit frustrating, but I’ve found it to be a hit with most older students.

Activities like these not only strengthen hands, but also build hand-eye coordination – all while students are having fun exploring with their senses!

Pom Pom Sorting: Speech and Language

It is a great opportunity to discuss colors, textures (soft vs. hard), the concept of in & out, and more!

When working with young learners, not only can you use it as a chance to review color names, but you can also chat about the various sizes off pom poms (big/bigger/biggest, etc.) as well as experiment with creating patterns or exploring basic addition/subtraction scenarios.

Pom Pom Sorting: Language Arts

There are so many ways to use pom poms in your at-home learning.

The sky’s the limit!

Place the orange pom down in the letter B. Place a pom down inside the first letter in the word frog. What letter sound to hear at the end of the word bed? Place a pom down in that letter.

Are these ideas helping you brainstorm ways you could use this activity with your own child?

Pom Pom Sorting: Math

Silicone ice cube trays are perfect to use for simple counting practice, pattern-making, hands-on addition and subtraction, or for exploring multiplication and division facts!

By creating arrays using poms placed down in the trays, students will be able to visually see their math facts!

You can also use the poms to interact with fractional parts of a group.

What fraction of the poms are red? What fraction of the poms are purple? 

Pom Pom Sorting: Geography

Want to give students some fun geography practice?

This seven continents mold (and a handful of pom poms) is all you need.

As you ask your student to identify each continent, they will drop a pom pom down in the corresponding spot!

Or try taking it to the next level:

Place a pom down in the continent where Ethiopia is located. or On which continent would you likely find penguins?

See how I threw a little bit of science in there as well? ha!

How about using this same idea only with the 50 states?

These free dot printables from Totschooling are perfect for pom activities!

Place your pom on the state where you live. Mark the state whose capital is Austin. Put a pom on a state whose name only has one syllable.

Pom Pom Sorting: Celebrating the Holidays

The holidays are a perfect time to break out your themed candy molds to do a little festive sorting.

For Valentine’s Day, I love these heart molds, and for Christmas, I have Christmas tree molds!

Interested in more Valentine’s Day activities you can do with craft poms?

These ideas will be especially helpful for those of you looking for fun, festive ways to strengthen your child’s fine motor skills.