Quick & Easy to Make Pom Pom Wall

My goal is to give you simple parenting tips and playful activity ideas to help you rock parenthood!

This quick and easy to make Pom Pom Wall is sure to be a winning activity that gets you "best parent award" this week!

Activities for little kids should be easy to set up, inexpensive, and fun! This one hits all three of those things. Bonus points if it sneaks in a little learning. Scroll down and I'll explain how that works.

We set this pom pom wall up a few weeks ago one morning and it is still on our wall! Every single kid that has come to our house is drawn to it... and has to play.

RELATED: Need more easy toddler activities? Grab our Year of Play! It has one activity per weekday for a whole year.

What do I need for a pom pom wall?

MATERIALS NEEDED FOR A POM POM WALL

paper towel tubes (or gift wrap tubes)
scissors
colorful cardstock or paper
painters tape
pom poms (all sizes)*

* Please note, if you have a child that still tries to put everything in her mouth, use large pom poms only.

I am in love with my pom pom basket, so I had to share a quick peak. This mesh basket is from Target and hangs out on the top shelf of my awesome craft & activities cupboard. When the kids see it come down, everyone gets excited!

Why make a pom pom wall?

This activity was inspired by our popular number tunnels activity. This kids loved making the number tunnels and could design them with only a little help, so we decided to take the activity vertical and see how it would work. The kids loved using their problem solving skills to design the course.

Pom poms seem to be the best materials to use with the tunnels on our walls. Soft balls could also have worked or even bouncy balls. We had hundreds of pom poms on hand, so that was an easy choice!

How to make a pom pom wall?

Start by grabbing some paper and cutting it in half. Tape pieces to the wall with a little bulge in the middle to make tunnels. You can also make long pieces of paper into colorful tubes to stick on the wall.

We also used paper tubes, but the paper "make your own" tubes and tunnels were more popular because you could decide how wide or thin to make them.

How do you play with the pom pom wall?

Once your tunnels and tubes are stuck to the wall, this is a great time to pass over the pom poms and sit back and watch what the kids do.

They may try sticking giants pom poms down itty bitty tubes. They may start dropping only yellow pom poms down the yellow tube... each kid will be different.

Take time to watch and see the problem solving and experimenting happen. Don't be too quick to jump in and help kids solve problems.

If a big pom pom gets stuck in a tube, encourage your kids to brainstorm how to get it out.

How can you sneak in learning?

You don't really have to. So much learning is taking place as the kids try putting the tubes and tunnels at different angles and attempt to use different sized pom poms.

If the kids don't ever start matching pom poms to tunnel colors, you can always model that by putting a yellow pom pom down a yellow tube and remark, "Look! The yellow pom pom went down the yellow tunnel." Sometimes kids think that is cool and run with it and repeat it, sometimes they'd prefer doing their own thing. Both are great.

But what about the mess?

The mess is totally worth it with this activity. Pom poms aren't actually that hard to pick up! Brace yourself ahead of time and know that you'll have a floor covered in pom poms during this activity.

Make picking up a game- like a basketball game. See how many pom poms kids can throw into the basket and time them.