Streamers are wonderfully cheap strips of crepe paper that can be used to help your child learn just about anything. Yes, seriously! If you’re like me you usually have a few rolls left over from a party long ago but now you can get them out and put them to use. Let me show you how.
As you can imagine, as soon as I introduced these brightly coloured rolls of paper Possum’s little (big) eyes lit up. I demonstrated to her how to unravel the rolls and she took on my instructions and had a go herself. It took lots of concentration but she showed her persistence, which was quite adorable to watch. Of course supervision is always required.
I had three rolls of streamers that I was happy to use. Firstly I make a huge mound of the streamers and allowed her to stomp over it. This was a brilliant sensory experience for her because she was using her feel instead of her hands, which I more commonly do. She giggled at the sound of the streamers crushing and because she needed to lift her legs high over the long lengths of streamers she was also developing her gross motor skills. Yay!
MATHEMATICS
If you had preschool or a school aged child you could consider using streamers to help develop skills in mathematics. Here are some ways you could do that –
- Have children build on fine motor skills in their hand and crush the streamers and then mold them into numbers and consider number formation (see above)
- Have children cut the streamers into various lengths and order them from smallest to largest and vise versa.
- Children can also use streamers for informal measuring (using non standard units of measurement)
- Children can learn more about more standard forms of measuring using rules and developing a greater understanding of what is a meter, inch, cm etc.
LITERACY
Streamers can also be used to help develop literacy skills too! Here are a few ways –
- Again scrunching the streamers into lengths children can also use them to form letters of the alphabet.
- Focus on letter formation
- Upper and lower case letters (see above)
- Creating their own name in streamers and paste it on paper
- Writing a very long story on a streamer will help writing and reading skills
The learning possibilities are endless. And if you find that you still have some streamers left over then it’s time to have a party (LOL). Click this link to see how I used streamers for Possum’s 1st birthday party.
I hope you’ve enjoyed reading and learning from this post.
Kate x
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Oh wow- so many uses! Brilliant.
I haven’t used streamers much here. I think the only think we’ve done with them was to weave them in and out of spokes on the back of our dining chairs.
Might try a few of your suggestions.
Thanks Jackie! I don’t think many people really think about streamers as a tool for learning. Glad I’ve been able to inspire you to give it a go. I appreciate you comments.
Great ideas! I never thought of these! (And best of all, crepe paper is so cheap) Thanks for sharing!
Very creative!!! My hubby loves to use old streamers as finish lines for races 🙂
Great ideas, I love the idea of using different lengths & learning about measurement.
So many fun ideas! My favorite is the big pile- looks like lots of fun!
What a great selection of ideas Kate…really love the letters, will have to try that with my girls thanks!
My kids would have a ball with streamers. I think I have to remember to forget the mess and just go with it. Some great ideas!
You know I don’t think my kids have ever played with streamers!! How is that even possible? 🙂 Hmmm might need to remedy that. I remember making paper mache with streamers are school… something about the colours running to make new colours…might need to look it up and maybe get us some streamers 🙂
That last photo is just beautiful, Kate 🙂 Great ideas too!
You my dear are a smart bunny! What a great (and super FUN) way to learn. I am such a better mum because of ideas like this!
Cool ideas 🙂 Pinning!