Busy Bag Exchange: Ribbon Snake, Felt Clothesline, Pompom Patterns and a Little Bit of Vygotskian Theory

Little Man had a blast today trying out three new activities from the first round of our Busy Bag Exchange!  Today we created a ribbon and felt snake, attempted to hang felt clothes from a clothesline and matched patterns with pom poms of different sizes and colors.  LM is enjoying the activities and I can already see his attention span and patience improving when he sits down to work on one of them. 

I also found it quite interesting how these activities are bringing out so much of my training and experience in the classroom as well.  For those of you Vygotskian theorists, I was thinking a lot about where Little Man's "zone of proximal development" is with each of the activities, and how I could scaffold the tasks to make them more manageable for him.  I know I'm an education geek, but it was a lot of fun.   =)

 Ribbon Snake

The ribbon snake is made from a length of ribbon with a felt square sewn onto one end and large button onto the opposite end.  Included in the bag were a variety of colorful squares of felt with a "button size" hole cut in the middle. 
The objective is for the child to practice their buttoning skills by fitting the button through the hole and stacking the felt pieces onto the ribbon. 

This activity definitely put Little Man's patience to the test.  Although, even when he struggled, he was still enjoying it.  This activity seemed to fall well within LM's "zone of proximal development."  He was unable to complete it independently, but after some demonstration and my help with actually pushing the button through the hole, he began to get it.  He was so proud of himself each time he managed to add a felt square to the ribbon and in the end we had a pretty sweet looking felt snake with a button tongue!

Choosing just the right piece to add next...

LM diligently focusing on getting the button through the hole.

He was NOT giving up!

Felt Clothesline

The felt clothesline activity bag included an adorable array of felt clothes shapes, a set of clothespins, and a length of clothesline.  The objective of this activity is for the child to practice using the clothespins to pin the clothes to the line.  Little Man had a very difficult time with this one.  Even with my assistance and guidance, he wasn't able to attach the clothes to the line.  Instead, we started with practicing the basic components of the activity, and we'll work our way up to it eventually!  This scaffolding is a big part of Vygotsky's theories, and has always proven invaluable in my experiences.

Phase One:  Learning how to use the clothespin. 
After a little practice, he was even able to attach the pin to the felt sock!

Phase Two: Learning how to clip the clothespin to the clothesline.

Little Man REALLY liked this part.  And of course, we had to count how many pins he had attached!

In a few days we may be moving on to attaching the clothes TO the line.

Pompom Patterns

The pompom pattern activity bag came with an assortment of pompoms in all colors and sizes.  It included a play mat with printed colored circles to match the pompoms.  The objective is for the child to match the size and shape of the pompoms to the circles shown on the paper.  Eventually this activity will be extended into patterning, having the child complete a given pattern with different sizes or colors of pompoms.

Little Man enjoyed this activity and it seems to be a good independent activity for a two year old.  He required very little assistance from me, aside from requesting "more biggie reds!"  =)