Encourage open-ended play and fun with these simple craft sticks and some velcro! I made these for one of my daughter’s busy boxes and I’m pretty sure that as she gets older, she’ll enjoy creating all sorts of fun shapes from it. In addition to simply playing with it, I already have some geometry lessons planned, from teaching basic shapes to regular shapes to congruent shapes to understanding the nuances between the different types of quadrilaterals… all using these sticks! Okay, that may be a few years out, but exploring through play at this early age can only help!
They are great for exploring polygons, enjoying color, and working on fine motor skills with the sticking and un-sticking. Even my husband got into it for a little while, and I’m sure visiting friends will get a kick out of building shapes with these fun little sticks (kind of how they love to find new ways to play with this
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How to Make Velcro Building Sticks
Suitable for children ages 1+
Materials
- 50 jumbo craft sticks
- 100 sets of adhesive velcro coins
(I ordered two packs of 75 adhesive coins, so will have some extra velcro for other use. If you can’t find them in a 100-pack (I didn’t look that hard), you could also just get 1 pack of 75 velcro coins (linked) and usejust 37 of the craft sticks and save the other 13 craft sticks for some other craft. Yay math.)
*Note: To get the best bang for your buck (as of 6/22/2015), get 100 craft sticks
Instructions
- Stick two velcro “hook” coins on either end of one side of a craft stick.
- Stick two velcro “loop” coins on either end of the other side of the same craft stick.
- Each stick should have four coins on it.
- Repeat for all of your sticks/velcro coins.
ENJOY!
7 responses to “Busy Box #3: Velcro Craft Sticks”
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This is awesome! I haven’t seen these before. Thanks Jo!
Neat idea, right? =D Enjoy!
I LOVE that idea, and I immediately thought of my classes with 3-, 4-, 7- and 8-year-olds, for polygons!!! Yay I love your blog, especially when you post educational stuff!!
But…. what about the colour, what did you use to make them so pretty and colourful? (I hope you didn’t have to paint them one by one, otherwise mine are likely to be very un-colourful, more like beige all over! ^^)
Oh. Now that I’ve been on amazon to try and buy the right stuff (from amazon france), I’ve… found out they were already colourful ! :$
Nice! I was just about to tell you but glad you figured it out :). Enjoy crafting!
🙁 I tried it out, but the little velcro circle don’t stay stuck to the (nicely colourful) sticks! And those that stay on all get stuck together, so it’s hard to take just one stick at a time. Which means that box is up in a closet somewhere out of her reach. Any ideas?
Oh no! I’m sorry to hear that some of the Velcro is not sticking to your sticks :(. I mean, I guess you could glue it, but that is SURE time consuming and inconvenient 🙁 You said some stick and some don’t… do you have extra Velcro to try again on the ones that didn’t stick? Otherwise, a smaller set of sticks could still be fun to play with. The other day my daughter was holding them in a square and marveling at how it suddenly bent a bit and became a diamond (I’ll teach her “rhombus” some other day ;))… and then a square… and then a diamond! So sometimes it only takes four sticks to teach them something :). But really, I feel frustrated for you! If you ordered through Amazon, my first step would be to chat with Amazon customer service and see if you can get a replacement for your Velcro! I usually have a pretty great experience with their customer service.
I do know what you mean about them all getting stuck in a bunch- I figure they’re strengthening their little fingers as they pull them apart? Hope that helps!