Clips (Paper and Clothes Clips) Activity Ideas

Last couple of days we have been doing a few simple fun activities using chart paper, paper clips and clothes clip. Primarily for improving fine motor skills while also reinforcing numbers and letters recognition and colours matching. These tiny little clips or pegs as they are also called, are great for developing a good pincer grip in little fingers.

When I first introduced the wooden clips to my little boy, a few months ago, it was for a name recognition activity. He found it really hard to work them. He was unable to open the clips. His tiny fingers were not ready for them and so I kept them aside for a few months and we used plastic clips for the activity instead. 

More recently. we again tried our hands at the wooden clips and this time he was able to work them perfectly! This time around, I first let him work on an activity that used plastic clips, then paper clips and finally we moved on to wooden clips. The difficulty level increased step by step and I am guessing that helped him get the hang of it.

Sharing here, the simple games we played and enjoyed using paper clips and clothes clips. 

Read, Count and Clip

The first activity was based around counting and using paper clips. I cut strips of an A4 sheet into about 2 inches in width. On each I wrote a number on top (from 1-10). I placed a little box full of paper clips next to these paper strips and presented it to the Mini. The little fellow had to read the number and insert as many clips onto the paper as the number asks to.

This is Mini's first encounter with paper clips and so he had to be taught how to properly insert it into the paper. I told him 'the small u and the big U need to be together' when he inserts the clip into the paper. That little line helped him a great deal and he very quickly got a hang of it.

He added his own little criterion to this game. He tried to colour code the clips for each number! Red for 1, Yellow for 2, Pink for 3... etc! So in addition to a fine motor and a number activity, he included a colour sort aspect to it as well! Triple whammy! :D

Hairstyle Colour Match

For this activity, I made little happy/funny faces using different coloured craft paper, and googly eyes. I made sure the paper colours I chose are in line with the colours of cloth clips we had at home. (Green, Blue, Yellow and Pink).

I presented these faces and a box full of plastic cloth clips to the little one. All he had to do was identify the colour of the happy face, find matching clips and clip on, to give the face some pretty hair! This is my personal favourite activity. So silly, yet so fun! :)

It was an instant hit and the little one loved giving the happy faces some pretty hair! :D

These plastic clips are not too hard to work with and can be easily opened and closed by little hands. I wanted him to get used to them before I re-introduced the wooden clips, which are a tad harder to operate.

Again my colours obsessions little one, began to match the coloured faces with similar coloured paper clips from our prev activity! He went on to insert the clips on the faces to give them beard this time! :D

What is Missing?

For this activity, we used wooden popsicle sticks and wooden cloth clips. I wrote series of letters and numbers on the popsicle sticks, leaving out one or two of them blank. These missing letters/numbers I wrote on the wooden clips. The little one had to take one popsicle stick at a time, read the series, find the missing letter or number from the series written on the popsicle stick, find the clip that has the missing item and clip it on!

I was guessing this would take him a few attempts to get a hang of, but no! He dived right into it and did it like a pro. I was pleased to see him being able to work his way around the wooden clips, with so much ease this time!

He was all done at the very first attempt and was happy to do them over a few more times. 

Find Your Name

This final activity, was something we did a while ago. It was not a part of this set but I am putting it here to group them all as clip activities. This game is based on name recognition. The objective was to find your name and clip. I had written his name along with ours and a few other easy to read words on sheets of paper. He had to find his name and clip the cloth clip exactly on it. 

This was a few months ago, when he wasn't ready for wooden clips. So we had moved to plastic clips for the activity. You can have a look at the original post of this activity here: Name Hunt and Clip.