So in my search to find textures and colours that my son, Noah, would enjoy on the busy board I am making him, I decided to try a sensory activity with pompoms. I thought that a way to add texture to the busy board might be to simply glue some pompoms on in a shape, a little like they did in this video below.

Before settling on this idea though, I wanted to see if Noah even liked pompoms. He had never seen or played with them before. My mom, a kindergarten teacher, just happens to have bins and bins of them in her classroom and in her basement. I then read about pompom bin sensory activities on websites like Busy Toddler: Making it to naps one activity at a time . My mom had also read about the pompom bin activity and used it in her classroom. Although Noah was only 11 months at the time, most people said this activity would be good for children a year up and we thought Noah was close enough.

The following video gives you an idea of how this activity can be set up and what it might look like.

 

 

I also found other videos like the one below that showed various activities young children could do with pompoms.

Notice how the children are so focused and neat in their attempts to take part in these activities. This was not the case with Noah. we set up a nice little sensory bin with pompoms, a measuring cup, tongs and a paper towel roll. First, it took some serious convincing to get Noah to even look at the bin. He was FAR more interested in everything other than the bin. Once he finally did make it over, the tongs seemed to be the only aspect of interest. In the end, Noah did what he does best: he dumped the bin and made as big of a mess as he could!

 

Although he might seem to be engaged in playing with the pompom’s in the pictures, that wasn’t really the case. He was more interested in the bin.  There were pompoms of all different colours and sizes, but they didn’t even seem to make it on his radar. So I think I can conclude that pompoms just aren’t his thing! I may still try gluing some pompoms down and see if he might have a different reaction when they are held in place, but for the moment, pompoms are not on the blue prints for Noah’s busy board!