I came across this big bag of shape buttons a couple weeks ago, and I knew I would use them for some sort of bin. But first I decided to use them to make a Shape Sort that also worked on fine motor skills!
Supplies to Make a Button Shape Sort
- Shape Buttons
- Puffs containers (or other container you want to recycle)
- Hot Glue
- Child Tweezers
- Empty Bin
Assembling a Fine Motor Button Sort
I picked out 4 different shaped buttons to concentrate on. I purposely chose shapes that had sides and corners, so my little guy would have to look closer at the shape to decide where it went.
Then I hot glued one of each button shape to an empty, clean puffs container. I just did the four, but you could certainly expand the activity to include all shapes you want to practice.
Then I threw the rest of the buttons (all the shapes) in a bin and set out some child tweezers.
At first he used his fingers to pick up the buttons and put them in the tweezers before dropping them in the correct container.
After some practice, he got the hang of the tweezers and started picking the buttons up with them. Some great fine motor work for those little hand muscles.
In the end he had a lot of fun recognizing the shapes, grabbing them with the tweezers, and dropping them in the container. But he had the most fun dumping them all back together again!