Wonderworks: Clothespins

Spring-style clothespins are great for improving your pincer grasp and also, they're just a lot of fun to play with!

Today's Topic: Clothespin as Technology
Supplies:
wooden or plastic clothespins
felt (or paper) "clothes"
pom-poms
string
die-cut long-legged animal shapes (with the legs cut off)
a picture of baby birds with open beaks
egg cartons

Book:  
Mrs. McNosh hangs up her wash / Weeks, Sarah



The inspiration for this class (or "what I thought kids might do"):
 Clothespin Geometry
 "Claw Grabbing Machine"
Clothespin Jungle

 What Kids Do: hang pretend clothes on a line (strung between two upside down chairs for lack of a better option)

 Feed the hungry baby birds (sparrow clothespins available here and elsewhere)

 pick up pom-poms and sort them into egg cartons

 make pom-pom people

 and ice cream cones

 add legs to some legless animals:

 this participant informed me that these two blue clothespins were actually sharks:

 RAWR!

 Here, the sharks are fighting over an old sock.

I introduced the idea of creating clothespin shapes which I got from this blog post

 And they took it a step further and made a lovely house for their clothespin animals:

 One of the moms created this fancy house! (I love it when the parents get just as involved as their kids!)

 This young artist was carefully coloring her clothespin animals

 And these young artists made some beautiful clothespin sculptures:

 And then started decorating themselves with clothespins!

 This inventor created a game where a pompom is dropped from a clothespin into an egg carton that is being moved back and forth very quickly.  Different points are assigned depending on where it lands.  I believe this one earned 52 points when it landed.

 Variations to try: 

Pinterest is filled with clothespin activities!  I wanted activities with as little pre-prep work as possible, but if you have a little more time, you might try some of these ideas:
feather clothespins, bunny clothespins, clothespin sharks (we actually made these but I somehow got no photos of them...),or my favorite: clothespin catapults (yes!!)