We recently explored about a billion activities related to exploring and making holes. Okay, well perhaps not quite that many but we did enjoy a whole week of exploring a whole lot of holes. From punching holes in paper to hiding objects in holes on the light table, the intriguing and simple ways young children can explore holes are just endless…
If you happen to have a copy of the book “Beautiful Oops” by Barney Saltzberg on hand, you will notice two beautiful pages contributed to exploring holes as part of making an “oops” into something creative and interesting. I shared these two pages with the kids (although the entire book is awesome) for the purpose of focusing their attention on our topic of holes…
The children looked through the holes in our book and discovered lots of color and design…
And then the book was left out near our light table for those who might like to look at it during center time (I had two copies that I left out)…
We also spent a few minutes as a large group looking over everyday objects that have holes and how the holes help us use those objects…
And then the children went off to the centers where they found many different ways to create with holes.  The centers I am sharing below were shared throughout a whole week and some of the centers were set up for our preschool class while some of them were set up for our prekindergarten class….
Holes at the Light Table
At the light table, the children dropped gems through holes using their fine motor skills to pick them up and drop them…
A second way the children explored holes at the light table was to fill up small holes with liquid water color. The children were able to mix the colors or simply focus on mastering their use of the pipette to transfer the color from one hole to the next…
Painting through Holes…
The preschool class painted through holes. They simply placed their white painting paper underneath the black paper with holes then painted through the black holes…
After the paint dried, the children found that they now had lots of colorful dots on their paper left behind from painting through all those holes…
Threading through Holes
It is always a challenge for young children to thread a hole but the children were up to the challenge…
The children used fine motor skills, eye-hand coordination, concentration, and creativity to thread yarn or pipe cleaners through beads and fruit loops…
Containers with Holes
The children also used wooden tongs to pick up pompoms and drop them through containers will various sized holes…
Punching Holes
Another type of challenge the children explored was punching holes. Â In this case, the children used a tool to punch holes in a letter “H”…
Some of our hole punching tools were much more difficult to use than others. So the children found which ones they could manipulate the best and punched all the holes they wished…
This little one was mostly interested in punching hearts out of the letter H and in the end made her own heart bracelet with hearts and clear packing tape…
The second approach to punching holes was by using a sharp tool like a tack to punch tiny holes through paper. The top paper was a pattern the children could use and the bottom paper was a solid color…
Once the children finished punching holes through their paper, they were able to hold the paper up to the light and see the light shine through the holes in their paper…
The third approach to punching holes was by using toothpicks to punch holes in play dough…
There are so many ways to explore the creative processes and tools for making holes and each of them are intriguing to young children.  You may have concern that using a toothpick to poke a whole is dangerous but let me encourage you to sit down at a table with your students and explore the process.  Trust that your students are far more capable than you might really know…
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