This is a recycled, set-up-in-two-minutes version of the game Kerplunk, only in reverse: instead of pulling straws out, a toddler pushes them in. Cut some holes around a cardboard tube, hand over a bundle of straws, and a child threads them through until the tube is criss-crossed inside like a little cage. It is fiddly, satisfying, and brilliant for small fingers. Ages 1.5 to 3.
What you need
- A cardboard tube. A kitchen roll or wrapping-paper tube is sturdier than a toilet roll tube.
- A bundle of straws.
- Scissors or a craft knife, for grown-up hands, to make the holes.
Poke or cut small holes all around the tube, scattered up and down and round the sides. Make them just big enough for a straw to pass through. That is the whole setup.
How it plays
Show a child once, then let them go. Lining a straw up with a small hole and pushing it through takes a steady pinch and good hand-eye coordination, the same control that holds a pencil later on. The first few go in easily, and then it gets interesting: as more straws cross the middle, a child has to thread the next one past the ones already in there, which is a real little puzzle.
The reward is a tube bristling with straws, criss-crossed inside like the frame of a Kerplunk game. Then comes the other half of the fun: pulling every straw back out, which is just as good for the hands, and starting all over again.
It costs nothing, it packs flat, and when the holes start to get too easy you can use a tube with smaller holes, or swap the straws for pipe cleaners to make the threading trickier again.
For more of the same posting and threading play, our playing with straws uses a colander instead of a tube, and our cotton swab posting works the same pinch through the holes of a sieve.