Pegs are easily accessible and often already in our homes. They are easy to use and have so many different uses other than hanging up washing, they are fabulous for developing motor skills and not just pincer grip but so much more!!
Here are some quick tips/hints and ideas for you to try - have fun! You can download a PDF version of the following ideas with accompanying photos at the bottom of the page
Prepositions – Tie this into speech and language practice play hide and seek to find the pegs e.g. behind/in front/above/behind/below/beside/inside etc.
Help with other areas such as dressing and toileting. Learning ‘where is behind?’
Place some pegs on the back of clothing and see if your little one can find and unclip them?
Peg whizzers – all you need is string, length of crepe paper and a peg! Make your own poi. Great for building shoulder strength and stability.
Pencil grip – easy peasy! Try this simple trick to help develop a pincer grip when using a pencil.
Opposites and pincer grip– e.g. put one peg high and one peg low / put one leg somewhere warm and one somewhere cold/ place one peg in a box and one outside a box.
Numbers, colours and listening to instructions–start easy- put one yellow peg on something yellow, and the build-up instructions e.g. put 3 yellow pegs on something red.
Washing/teddy/dolls clothes this works on shoulder stability and sequencing -a great garden activity. Line up 3 bowls/buckets. Remove the clothes from toys (good dressing and body awareness practice, soak in a bowl 1 and mix around until wet, place in bowl 2 with a little squirt of washing up liquid, scrub and wash the clothes, wring out and then place in bowl 3 of clean water to rinse all the soap suds away. Now on a string strung above the children’s head level get them to peg up the items ready for drying!
Clothes peg tag -stamina and dexterity -group game. Each child starts with 10 pegs clipped onto their clothes. On the count of three, the children chase each other and try to clip their own pegs onto someone else’s clothes. After three minutes, stop the game and see who has the least number of pegs attached to them. Announce them the winner!
Or
Give every child a handful of clothes pegs to peg anywhere on their clothes where they can be reached by other children.
On 'Go' signal, everyone tries to pull a clothes peg off someone else. As soon as a clothes peg is snatched, the child that stole it kneels down, they pin the clothes peg to their clothes. While kneeling, the child is safe from having a clothes peg taken. Set a time limit and see who (or which team) has the most clothes pegs when time is called. You may need to set rules to prevent kneeling too long or kneeling without first snatching a clothes peg.
Visual processing and turn taking -You need as many different colours of peg as there are players. For example, if you have three players, you need red pegs, green pegs and yellow pegs.
Put five pegs of each colour into a bag and mix them up. So, with three players, there will be 15 pegs altogether.
Without looking, each player draws five pegs out of the bag. They secretly decide what colour they want to collect.
Simultaneously, each player passes a peg they don’t want to the person on the left.
Repeat until someone wins with five pegs of the same colour.
Players can hide their pegs, or lay them out visibly, depending on the age of the children. Use more pegs for a longer game.
Matching – find coloured clothes pegs in various shades or paint wooden pegs in different shades - then get some paint shade cards from the hardware stores or make your own and make a matching game. The pegs can be hidden around the house/garden to make it more fun!
Download a PDF version of the above ideas, complete with accompanying photos, by clicking the link below.