Color Matching with Clothespins

You’ll need:

• Clothespins. {Make sure the mechanism isn’t too hard to work for your toddler.}
• Colored paper or colored stickers.
• Piece of cardboard.
• Cutting knife, scissors, hole punch or similar.
• Glue.

 

How to make a Color Matching Game with Clothespins:

• Glue (or stick) colored paper to clothespins.
• Glue (or stick) paper in the same colors near the edges of a piece of cardboard.
• Have your toddler pin the clothespins next to or on the matching colors on the cardboard.

Photos:

 

How it worked for us:

This is even easier to make than the Bottle Cap Color Matching Game. There’s no need to have more than small colored areas on the gameboard {although you can make the areas bigger if you prefer and don’t mind the extra work in getting it all to line up properly}, so I simply punched out stars to glue on both the clothespins and piece of cardboard.

The two sets I made here are my second and third, btw, so I was able to incorporate some of the lessons I learned from the first try. This time, I glued the colored stars to both sides of the clothespins to avoid confusion, and I used ModPodge because in my first attempt, where I used regular glue, the stars kept falling off the clothespins and cardboard after a short time.

E loved my first attempt at making this game right away, even when she was just clipping the clothespins on the cardboard without paying attention to the colors at first. {She just can’t resist a clothespin clipping opportunity 😉 } When I gave her the shiny new version, she was just as excited as the first time she saw it, and went right to work on it.

I made the smaller version just for variety and to fit more easily into a busy bag.

 

What I learned from it:

• Clothespins are great for playing while learning (and learning while playing).
• Put the colored areas on both sides of the clothespin.
• Use some good glue to keep the stars on the clothespins. {You can always laminate the cardboard to keep the stars from coming off.}

 

The idea:

I saw this on a website well before I knew about Pinterest but I’m sure there are many examples around. I love the simplicity of making this and the fine motor practice and hand-strengthening benefits of using clothespins. And of course E just loves clothespins.

 

 

 

If you like this post, click here to subscribe to my newsletter and receive an email once a week when new posts are published, or to my RSS feed.

Also make sure to follow me on Pinterest to stay up to date with all we do, and for lots of great ideas from others!

If you prefer Facebook, I’d love to connect with you there: Like and drop me a line on my Facebook page, where I share my own posts and those of others every day!