toddler sewing basket - cable ties

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the other day i mentioned cable (or zip) ties. now some of you might be thinking um kat? cable ties in a toddler's sewing basket? i know! here is what happened:

in many toddler activities i had noticed the presence of pipe cleaners. the sweet tots string things upon them, weave them onto other things, & poke them through still other things. the last was my worry.

elfling does enjoy poking. he also enjoys quickly finding more mischievous uses for things. sure, poking a long fuzzy thing, with a sharp pokey bit at either end, into a colander/strainer/etc is great fun for a few seconds. but why do that when there are eyes/brothers/etc within poking distance? exactly.

recently manlyman asked me to buy him a pack of cable ties, only the ones i bought were the wrong size, so i tossed them into the studio, & promptly forgot about them. a few days later i saw them & had an epiphany - cable ties in place of pipe cleaners! oh the cleverness of me.

here you can see the cable ties woven into the acorn thingamajig.

& here they are poked into the acorn thing. a colander does work, much better in fact, but i was too lazy to get ours.

here you can see using a cable tie to strengthen a stack of spools & wheels.

& more of the same.

here the spools & wheels are strung onto the tie, & other ties are poked into the wooden bits.

we lucked out in that the bag in which the cable ties came is a resealable one. another activity!

it took elfling nearly as long to put each tie into the bag, as it took to play with everything. i am going to enjoy this while it lasts, as i am sure he'll eventually realize he can shove in many at a time.

so that is the why & how of it. weaving, poking, stringing; it's all a first step in mastering the skills needed to sew. sans bloody brothers & missing eyeballs.

~peace.

toddler sewing basket

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if you follow me on pinterest you will know that i have a toddler homeschool board. on it i pin activities that i think elfling will like. not all have been the huge success i had hoped they would be (example), but others have been. the toddler sewing kit is one such success. here are the beginnings of ours.

the stringing kit long ago lost its favor, but reclaimed it by being added to the sewing basket. fickle toddler. we still store this set in the pouch i had sewn for it, to help keep the basket organized.

yarn & a blunt yarn needle for sewing practice. i have wrapped the yarn (there are actually two shorter lengths on this) around a spool. it helps eliminate a tangled mess, & elfling thinks it is fun to wrap & unwrap.

the others used mesh in an embroidery hoop for practice. he tried it, but no matter how taut i made the mesh, there was too much give, & he would become frustrated. i should say here that elfling is not what you'd call the most patient of toddlers. i am sure that most wee ones would do well with the mesh-in-hoop version. happily, i had this metal tray? decoration? basket? (i honestly do not know its original purpose) acorn in the studio which works perfectly.

also in the basket: a nylon zipper, a bag of cable ties (aka zip ties), & a felt stringer. more on the last two another day.

if you have any other ideas for the toddler sewing basket, i would love to hear about them. you know. in the comment section. which this blog has. nudge, nudge.