Cardboard Slotting and Coin Drop
Your child turns a disc until it lines up with the slot, posts it, and listens for it landing.
- Age
- 2 to 3, best at 2
- Setup
- 15 min, once
- Play
- 5 to 10 min
- Materials
- Household only
- Mess
- None
- You
- Set it up, then leave
Activity KG-A053
What you need
The whole thing is a lid with a cut in it. The part that repays five extra minutes is the size of the discs, because that is what decides whether this runs on its own or needs you sitting on top of it.
- A tub or box with a lid that lifts offx1 to x3 Or: a shoebox. Or a 1 litre ice cream tub, which has the friendliest lid of the lot. At two, tipping the discs back out is half the activity. A lid a child can pull off herself means the loop runs on its own; a lid that needs adult thumbs means the game stops every ninety seconds and waits for you.
- Discs at least 5 cm acrossx15 to 30 Or: jam jar lids, coffee jar lids, the plastic lids off crisp tubes, wooden coasters. Five centimetres is the line worth holding. Anything that slides through the middle of a toilet roll tube is too small for an age that still investigates with its mouth, which rules out bottle caps and most buttons. Jam jar lids at 6 to 7 cm are the easiest thing in the house that passes.
- Thick cardboard and a mugx12 discs Drawing round a mug gives you twelve 7 cm discs in six minutes, and they cost nothing to replace when they get bent. Doubled corrugated card is stiff enough to push through a tight slot without folding.
- A craft knife or a sharp pair of scissorsx1 The slot needs to be one centimetre longer than the widest disc and about three millimetres taller than the thickest one. Cut it tight and the disc jams; cut it wide and the disc falls through without the wrist ever having to turn.
- Masking tapex1 Along every cut edge. Plastic lids cut with a knife leave a sharp lip, and this is an activity where fingers go right up to the slot.
How to set it up
- Lay your widest disc on the lid and draw a slot one centimetre longer than it is across.1 min
- Cut the slot, then run masking tape along both cut edges.4 min
- Draw round a mug on thick card and cut out twelve discs.6 min
- Post two discs, take the lid off, tip them out, and push the whole thing across to her.1 min
What to say and what to do
Say
In it goes.
Turn it round.
- And then nothing at all. The clatter of the disc landing is the only feedback this needs.
Do
- Start with one slot cut straight across and leave it that way for a week or two. The second direction is a whole new problem and it lands better on its own.
- Put out far more discs than seems sensible. Thirty discs is a five minute sitting and twelve is ninety seconds, and at two the length of a run tracks the size of the pile more than anything else.
- Leave the box out at floor level. This is one of the handful of activities a two year old goes back to without being offered it.
Let be
- The lid coming off and the discs going in the open box. That is a child solving the problem in front of her, and the slot gets used again on the next round.
- Two discs pushed through at once, wedged together. Getting them unstuck is a better piece of hand work than posting the next one.
- A long pause spent turning one disc over and over without posting it. Something about the edge has her attention, and it is not wasted time.
What it looks like when it is working
- The wrist turns before the disc reaches the lid, rather than after it has bumped into it.
- She holds the disc at its edge with finger and thumb instead of in her fist.
- He posts the whole pile without looking up once.
- The box gets carried to you, emptied, and taken straight back.
What to expect at each age
At two
Lines the disc up by pressing it flat against the lid and sliding it until it drops. Gets it in about one try in two with a horizontal slot, and a vertical one usually stumps the hand for a while.
Turning the wrist in advance, before the disc touches the lid, comes later. At two the lid itself is doing most of the lining up.
Lasts 4 to 8 minutes
At two and a half
Turns the disc in the air to match the slot most times, and starts choosing which box to post into. Very interested in taking the lid off and putting it back.
A diagonal slot is the next real step, because it cannot be solved by turning a quarter turn and hoping.
Lasts 8 to 12 minutes
At three
Posts fast and accurately into any direction of slot, sorts by colour or size while posting, and invents rules about which disc goes in which box.
By now the hand is not the difficulty, so the interest moves to the sorting. This is the point where the slots start wanting letters or numbers on them.
Lasts 10 to 15 minutes
When it goes sideways
Everything here is the box telling you where the level is sitting, and all four fixes take under a minute.
She pulls the lid off and drops them in the open box
The slot is asking for more than the hand can do right now, and she has found the faster route, which is a good sign about her and not about the slot.
Widen the slot by three or four millimetres and put the lid back on. When a disc goes through with almost no aiming, the aiming starts getting practised.
He is posting the remote control and a sock
The thing being learnt is the class of objects that go into slots, and at two that class is under construction. Everything gets tested.
Keep one box out as the posting box and let it take anything that fits. The generalising settles in a week or two, and it settles faster with somewhere legitimate to do it.
It is over in ninety seconds
Twelve discs is twelve posts, and that is the whole activity rather than a short version of it.
Put out thirty. Card discs cut round a mug are the cheapest way to triple the pile, and the sitting roughly triples with it.
She brings it to me to open every time
The lid is stiffer than her thumbs, so the emptying has become an adult-shaped job in the middle of an independent activity.
Swap to a soft ice cream tub lid, or cut the bottom out of a shoebox so the whole box lifts off the pile like a hat.
Making it harder
Four rungs and one pile of discs. The slot changes direction, then multiplies, and nothing new gets bought at any point.
One slot, straight across
- Ready when
- This is where everybody starts.
- What changes
- A horizontal slot, a generous one, and twenty discs.
- What is new
- Letting go at the right moment, which is most of what posting is at this age.
A second box, slot upright
- Ready when
- He posts into the horizontal slot without pressing the disc against the lid first.
- What changes
- A second container with the slot cut vertically down one side, both boxes out together.
- What is new
- Turning the wrist a quarter turn to match the slot, and choosing which box to aim at.
A slot on the diagonal
- Ready when
- She switches between the two boxes without fumbling.
- What changes
- A third slot cut at forty five degrees, on a box of a different colour.
- What is new
- A rotation that cannot be guessed, so the eye has to measure the angle before the hand moves.
Posting with a rule
- Ready when
- All three slots are easy and he is posting without watching his hands.
- What changes
- Same boxes, but the big lids go in one and the small ones in another, or the metal in one and the card in another.
- What is new
- The hand runs on its own while the head does the sorting, which is where this turns into a thinking activity.
Stop when the pile runs out rather than at a tidy moment. Leaving the lid off and the discs heaped beside the box is what makes it the first thing picked up tomorrow.
How to keep it safe
Two year olds still investigate with their mouths, so the size of the discs is the whole of this and it is an easy rule to hold.
- Every disc at least 5 cm across. The quick test is a toilet roll tube: if it slides through, it belongs in a different activity until three.
- Masking tape along every cut edge, on plastic lids especially. A knife through a tub lid leaves a lip that a finger finds on the way to the slot.
- You do the cutting, and the knife goes back in the drawer before the box comes out.
- Sit in the room for this one. Two year olds are fast, and the first few sittings are when everything gets tested against the mouth.
Why this helps
From the guide The claims here follow our guide on hands, pencils and the grip question.
Posting a disc through a slot is an aiming problem with a rotation built into it. The hand has to bring an object to a place, hold it at the right angle all the way there, and then let go at exactly the right moment. Two year olds are still assembling all three of those, and a slot is the clearest possible test of whether they have come together, because there is no partial credit: the disc goes through or it sits on the lid.
Cutting the slots in different directions is what lifts this above a money box. One slot can be solved by pressing the disc flat and sliding it about until it falls in. Three slots at three angles cannot, so the wrist has to turn in the air before the disc arrives, and turning the wrist to match something you can see is the beginning of every tool the child will ever hold, from a spoon to a key to a screwdriver.
Skill practised: turning the wrist to match a slot, and letting go on time
Nothing is being taught here in any formal sense. A two year old posts discs because things that vanish and come back are the best thing going.
Where a set helps
Our Slot and Post Frame is this activity built to last, with interchangeable faces so the slot direction changes in five seconds instead of needing a new box, and posting pieces sized well above the small-parts line. The shoebox version does the same job and does it well, and a great many children never need anything else. The frame earns its place in a house where the box is in daily use and keeps getting rebuilt, or where an older child wants the slots changing every week.
One a week, at your child's age
We publish one new activity a week at each age, in exactly this format. The moment worth watching on this one is the wrist turning before the disc reaches the lid, which is hard to describe and obvious in three seconds of video.
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Questions parents ask
Can we use real coins?
Not at two. A coin is well under the size that still goes in the mouth at this age, and it is also too thin for a slot that a toddler can aim at. Jar lids and card discs cut round a mug give the same satisfying drop at a size that suits the age, and real coins become a good version of this at four or five.
How big should the slot be?
One centimetre longer than the widest disc, and about three millimetres taller than the thickest. Tighter than that and the disc jams, which ends the run. Wider and the disc falls through at any angle, which takes the whole problem out of it.
He only wants to take the lid off and tip them out. Is he doing it wrong?
Emptying is half of this activity and it is the half that makes it repeatable. Filling and emptying a container is one of the things two year olds work at hardest, and the posting is what he does on the way back round. Leave both ends of it alone and the loop runs by itself.
How long before we add the second direction?
A week or two, or whenever a horizontal slot stops taking any aiming. There is no hurry: the vertical slot is genuinely harder, and it lands much better on a hand that has already stopped thinking about the first one.