Making patterns with cereal bracelets

Most of you know that I contribute twice a month over at No Time for Flash Cards.  Here is a post I did for Allie’s site a few months ago. 

Do you remember candy bracelets?  This activity puts an educational and healthier twist to that bracelet from your past.  All you will need are chenille stems, loop cereal (such as Fruit Cheerios or Fruit Loops), and an egg carton or muffin tin.

This activity is perfect if you have children at different levels of development because it can be implemented in so many different ways.  I have toddlers and a preschooler.  Activities that they can both do at the same time score big points with me.  I gave Charley an egg carton and asked her to put the cereal in each compartment.  This works great for developing motor skills.

Cole was given a muffin tin and asked to sort the cereal by colors.  While both of the children put the cereal in their containers, I folded the tips of the chenille stems inward to make sure the wire did not poke the children. 

 

After Cole was finished sorting, I gave him a chenille straw.  I asked which colors he would like to use to make a bracelet.  Out of six colors, he only wanted to use two.  So I asked him to thread the cereal onto the stem in a pattern of green, green, orange, orange. Depending on your child, you can do patterns of ABAB, AABB (like we did), ABCABC, or any other pattern.

While he was threading his cereal, I tried to show Charley how to thread the cereal onto the stem.  As soon as we got one piece of cereal on she would chomp on it and giggle.  It was extremely cute and provided her with a ton of fine motor skill practice, but didn't help me get a picture to share with you.  My daughter is only 19 months old (when this was originally written) and is not ready for patterns, but simply threading the cereal onto the stem is a great activity.  She also just used the chenille stem as a hockey stick to shoot the cereal onto the floor.  We will just call that a hand-eye coordination building exercise.  Mommy didn't appreciate it very much and put an end to it quickly.

When my son was finished threading the cereal we talked about the pattern and how it made the string look a certain way because of the pattern.  I put on a purple and a red at the very end and asked him if those two matched the rest.  We talked about how those two didn't fit in with the pattern, so he decided they needed to be taken off.   

To make it a neat bracelet we simply wrapped the chenille stem around his wrist and twisted the ends together.  Now you have a great snack to finish up your fun learning activity.  The best thing about this snack is that it is portable and can be taken along for the fun. 

My son's preschool class does this activity on a regular basis.  As you can imagine it is a big hit with the girls, but met with the same enthusiasm from the boys.  I want to thank my son's preschool teachers for providing me with a fun learning activity that is so easy to do at home.  I know they aren't the ones that originated it, but they shared it with me and I thought I would share it with you.