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Upgrade your playroom, craft and educational activities with pouch caps! These are the caps that twist off from your child’s baby food pouches or even older children’s applesauce containers and can be used for a variety of crafts and activities.

They come in so many colors, are durable and your older children can use them in some really fun learning activities. There are so many amazing educational activities that you can do with them, including this fun necklace threading activity. This pouch activity explores pattern making, fine motor skills and threading. Your child will have no idea that they are learning-through-play.

Allow your child to make the neklace, or bracelet of their dreams while playing, learning, and becoming little fashionistas.

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What Are Pouch Caps?

Pouch caps, refer to the tops of squeezable baby food pouches. There are so many baby food brands on the market these days, and therefore a variety of colorful caps to go along with it. 

RELATED: I find baby food pouches cheapest at Aldi. 

If you don’t have a baby in your house, there are actually many other uses for baby food pouches aside from just using them as he obvious. I have bought baby food pouches as a quick way to add to my kiddos smoothies, sweet potato puree (as an egg replacer) and as “jelly” on some sandwiches. It’s a great shortcut and mom hack to get some extra veggies in your life. They also have these pouch caps on squeezable applesauce pouches, although they are usually all the same color.

Back to the star of the pouch…the cap. I’ve seen these caps used in all sorts of craft projects, as magnets, and used in educational activities. So I decided to start saving them for rainy day projects of our own. 

How Many Pouch Caps Do I Need For This Activity?

In order to get started with the specific pouch cap threading activity, you want at minimum 6 pouch caps, or preferably enough for your child to be able to identify and start thinking about patterns. If you don’t care about adding the pattern element, then you can get started with whatever pouch caps you have (minimum 6) and an old shoelace.

Why Are Patterns Important For Learning?

The beginning focus of this activity is to find patterns so you can make a pretty necklace. What your child won’t realize is that they are actually doing lots of creative thinking and learning. 

Patterns are important to preschoolers because they set down the foundation to learning and understanding basic math skills. 

The most basic pattern is an AB, AB, AB pattern. For this activity I laid out all of the caps out on butcher block paper first, and asked my preschooler to pick out two colors. She picked out green and red. I then asked her to line up the caps, one red, then one green. Then another set. Then I started asking basic questions, like; what comes next? How many reds do we have? How many greens do we have? 

I then moved on to an AB, ABC pattern, or in this case, green, red, green, red, blue; and then again we discussed what pouch caps would come next. 

We tried this with several different color combinations that she got to chose. I then made harder patterns using a marker on a piece of paper, and asked her to search for the caps to correspond to the dots on the paper. We came back to the activiy throughout the day and even the week, little minds need breaks to absorb these new concepts!

Eventually she started recognizing even harder patterns. GO AT YOUR CHILD’S pace! They may only get the AB, AB concept for awhile. Work on it whenever you have time. At lunch I noticed she started lining her veggie straw up in pattern order. She is now looking for patterns wherever we go.

Pouch Caps & Fine Motor Skills For Preschoolers

The next element of this activity focuses on fine motor skills. Pick your favorite pattern and string the caps along an old shoe string. This is great for eye-hand coordination, 

The pouch cap has an opening at the top which makes them the perfect for threading!

I showed my daughter how to take the string and hold it in one hand and thread the pouch cap along the shoelace string. There was a little fumbling at the beginning trying to get the right arms length in order to hold and then string it along. 

Recycle and Play Pouch Cap Necklace

Once the activity was complete I simply tied a knot at the end of the shoelace and tied it on to my daughter’s neck. We could have easily turned this into a pouch cap bracelet as well! I love that we can change out the colors of the necklace whenever we want. 

 

Pouch Cap Threading and Pattern Activity

Yield: One Necklace

Prep Time: 5 minutes

Active Time: 25 minutes

Total Time: 30 minutes

Difficulty: Preschool Age Child

How to set up this fun threading and pattern activity for preschoolers.

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Materials

• - Butcher Block Paper (optional)
• - Pouch Caps (at least 6)
• - Shoestring (preferably colorful)

Instructions

1. On a large piece of butcher block paper, lay out all of the pouch caps you have available.
2. Discuss with your child the basics of patterns starting with an AB pattern (ex: red, green, red, green)
3. Ask them which colors would come next to see if you can build on pattern.
4. Try an AB, ABC pattern (ex: red, green, red, green, blue)
5. Demonstrate to your child how to take the pouch caps and string them onto the necklace, adding them in the specific pattern you just put together.
6. Tie a knot at the ends and place around your child's neck.

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