🧷 Pegs on a Cup
Squeeze, clip, repeat — the best hand-strength workout there is.
🥄 Make·15 min·Free·Ages 1–4·👶 Medium·🧑 Light
⚠️ Safety first
Stay beside them the whole time. Pegs pinch fingers — the soft wooden kind only. Not for under 2.
You know your child best — supervise the whole time and skip anything that isn't right for them. See our Terms.
Why this is good for your child
- ✓Pincer grip
- ✓Hand strength
🌱 Montessori-inspired · Practical Life
What you need
Clothes pegs · Tin or cup
How to do it
- 1.Show them how to squeeze a peg open.
- 2.Clip it to the rim of a cup.
- 3.Fill the whole rim, then pull them all off.
How it actually goes
- ⏱ 30-second set-up —
- Thirty seconds: put clothes pegs, tin or cup on a tray or a clear bit of floor, and sit down next to it before you call them over.
- 🧑 What you do —
- Show it once, slowly, without talking over yourself. Then hand it over and stop helping unless they ask.
- 👶 What they do —
- Do the real job, slowly, with their own hands — spills and all.
- ✅ What success looks like —
- At 1–2 they'll tip it out and put nothing back. That's the work — emptying comes long before filling.
- 🧺 How to put it away —
- Everything back into one basket or tray, carried back to its spot by them. Naming the spot out loud is what makes it stick.
- 📈 When they outgrow it —
- Older? Hand over the whole job, start to finish, including the clean-up.