In my previous post, I shared with you the book “Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons” by Eric Litwin and James Dean along with our button collage. Â Today, I want to share with you our button bracelets we made.
Counting Buttons
As I mentioned in my previous post, I just love bright and colorful buttons and all the wonderful ways you can explore with buttons. Â Before making our bracelets, the children and I spent a few minutes together counting buttons and making button patterns.
In advance, Mrs. Courtney put eight buttons in a baggie for each of our students. Â Four large and four small buttons. Â After we read our story, I gave each child their baggie of buttons and asked them to take a guess as to how many buttons they thought might be in their baggie. Â Then the children were invited to take the buttons out of the baggie and count them to see what number of buttons were actually in their baggie…
Button Patterns
Next, I invited the children to see if they could make a pattern with their buttons. Â My students are getting very good at making patterns and figured out right away that they could make a big button, small button pattern…
Once the children finished their patterns, they put their buttons back into their baggie to use later on if they wanted to make a button bracelet. At the button bracelet station, there were only trays and pipe cleaner pieces set out since the children already had their buttons in the baggies…
Threading Buttons
I explained to the children that they could thread the pipe cleaners through the holes of the buttons to make a bracelet. I showed them two methods of threading.  The first method was to push the pipe cleaner up  through one hole and back down through another hole then slide the button over – which is very hard to do. I had one student choose this method and I was amazed when he showed me his bracelet. I didn’t realize he had chosen the first method until he was all done and was quite surprised he was able to make his bracelet with the up and down threading…
The second method was to push the pipe cleaner through a button hole in one direction and slide the button over a bit then go on to the next button. Â Although the second method was somewhat easier, it was still challenging because the children had to really work to get that pipe cleaner to fit through the holes of the smaller buttons…
After the children finished their button bracelets, Mrs. Courtney and I helped them twist the ends of the pipe cleaner around so the bracelets would stay closed and the sharp point at the ends of the pipe cleaner would be tucked away inside the bracelet.  We also made sure that the bracelets were just large enough to slip on and off over their hands so the children could choose whether they wanted to wear them  around or go and put them in their cubby…
And just as a reminder, I got some of these buttons from Walmart and some of them from Michaels….
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