Clothespin Pinching

Your child squeezes a wooden clothes peg open and clips it onto the rim of a bowl, and then does it forty more times.

Age: 2 to 4, best at 2
Setup: None
Play: 5 to 10 min
Materials: Household only
Mess: None
You: Set it up, then leave

Activity KG-A010

A bowl, a handful of wooden pegs, and a two year old who has found the hardest thing her fingers can do

2 year olds Hands and Fingers Grip and Hand Strength Pincer Grip and Small Precision Persistence Independence Concentration No Mess Costs Nothing Quiet Independent Play Travel and Waiting Rooms Start Right Now, No Preparation Jars, Boxes and Containers

What you need

Everything is already on the drying rack. The only line that changes how this goes is which pegs, because peg springs vary more than you would think.

Wooden clothes pegsx10 to 20 Or: plastic pegs, which are usually lighter to open. Or hair clips. Wooden pegs with a soft spring open with about the force a two year old can just manage. Squeeze a few yourself first and keep the easiest ten; the stiff ones can go back on the line.
A bowl, tub or beaker with a firm rimx1 Or: a shoebox lid. Or the edge of a biscuit tin. The rim has to be thin enough for the peg to close right over it. A thick plastic mixing bowl rim is the usual reason a peg will not stay on.
A second container for the loose pegsx1 Pegs in a heap on the table roll off it. In a tub they stay where the hand goes looking for them, which keeps the run going.

How to set it up

Put ten pegs in one tub and the empty bowl beside it.20 sec
Clip two pegs onto the rim yourself, slowly, where she can see your thumb and finger.20 sec
Slide the whole thing in front of her and sit back.10 sec

What to say and what to do

Say

Squeeze here.
It goes on the edge.
Then nothing. This one runs on its own once the first peg is on.

Show the pinch with an exaggerated thumb and one finger, once, and then put your hands in your lap.
Let her use two hands, or her whole fist, or her teeth. The grip refines itself over weeks of doing this, not inside one sitting.
Leave the pegs out on a low shelf. This is one of the few activities that gets picked up again without being offered.

Let be

A peg clipped in the middle of the rim instead of at the marked spot is still a peg she opened.
Half the pegs ending up in the bowl rather than on it. Dropping them in is the same squeeze, finished differently.
The pile she abandons at four minutes. Four minutes of this is a real amount of hand work at two.

What it looks like when it is working

The thumb starts working against one finger rather than the whole hand closing.
She turns the bowl towards herself rather than walking round it.
The pegs go on faster near the end of a run than at the start.
She brings you the bowl to look at, and then takes it straight back.

What to expect at each age

At two

Opens the peg with both hands, or presses it against the table to force it open, and gets it onto the rim about one try in three. Clips land wherever the hand happens to be.

A whole rim of evenly spaced pegs comes later. At two the interest is in the squeeze itself, and the bowl is just somewhere to put the result.

Lasts 4 to 8 minutes

At three

One hand, thumb against index finger, and most pegs land where he aimed. Starts making patterns round the rim, or all of them in one cluster.

Sorting by color while clipping arrives around four, once the hand has stopped taking all the attention.

Lasts 8 to 15 minutes

At four

Clips pegs onto a line, onto card, onto the edge of her own sleeve. Invents the rule herself: every second one, or only the blue ones.

By now the pinch is easy, so the interest moves to what the pegs are for. This is the point to hang a string across the room.

Lasts 10 to 20 minutes, often as part of something else

When it goes sideways

Each of these is the activity telling you something about its level, and each has a one-move answer.

The peg will not open

Peg springs vary a lot, and a stiff peg needs more force than a two year old hand makes.

Sit down with the bag and keep the ten softest. A worn peg from the back of the drawer is the best one in the house for this.

She loses interest after a minute

The squeeze is landing but the bowl is not giving her anything back, so there is no reason to do the next one.

Clip a length of string between two chairs and hang a sock on it. A peg that holds something up gives an answer the bowl cannot.

He is putting them in his mouth

Normal at two, and the peg is the most interesting object on the table. Mouthing is how a lot of two year old investigating gets done.

Swap to the biggest pegs you have, stay at the table for this one, and it usually stops within a couple of sittings once the hands find the more interesting job.

It is over in three minutes every time

Ten pegs is ten squeezes, and at two that is genuinely the whole activity.

Put out thirty. The length of a run at this age tracks the size of the pile more than anything else.

Making it harder

Four rungs, all of them made from the same pegs. Nothing new is bought at any point.

typically 2

Pegs onto a bowl rim

Ready when: This is where everybody starts.
What changes: A tub of pegs, a bowl, and no other rule.
What is new: Opening the spring at all, which is the whole job at this age.

typically 2 to 3

Pegs onto a hanging string

Ready when: She can open a peg and land it on a rim most times she tries.
What changes: A string tied between two chair backs at her shoulder height, and a pile of dolls' clothes or socks.
What is new: Two things at once: hold the cloth against the line with one hand, open the peg with the other.

typically 3

Pegs onto marked spots

Ready when: He can clip a sock onto the line without it falling.
What changes: Ten dots drawn round the rim of a paper plate in marker, one peg per dot.
What is new: Aiming. The squeeze now has to hold while the hand moves to a target.

typically 3 to 4

Peg sorting by color

Ready when: She places pegs on marked spots without checking each one.
What changes: Colored dots, and pegs with a stripe of the matching color drawn on the end.
What is new: The hand runs on its own while the head does the sorting, which is the point where this turns into a thinking activity.

Stop wherever the pile runs out rather than at a finished picture. Pegs left clipped round a bowl on the shelf are an invitation to start again tomorrow.

How to keep it safe

Pegs are a supervised toy at two, and two lines cover it.

Sit in the room for the first few sittings. A peg that snaps shut on a finger stings, and two year olds usually want an adult right then.
Use one-piece wooden or plastic pegs in good condition. Set aside any that are split or missing the spring, and keep the rest for the washing.
Big pegs for a child who is still mouthing things. A standard 7 cm clothes peg is too long to swallow and is the right size to hold.
Put the tub away on a shelf between sittings if there is a baby in the house.

Stay in the room Whole pegs only From 2

Why this helps

From the guide The claims here follow our guide on hands, pencils and the grip question.

The pinch that opens a clothes peg is the thumb working against one finger with the rest of the hand out of the way, held long enough to move it somewhere. That is a surprisingly rare demand in a toddler's day, and it is the same grip that later holds a pencil, a zip pull and a button.

The other half of it is repetition. A peg gives an immediate, unmistakable result: it is on, or it is not. That clarity is what lets a two year old do the same squeeze forty times without an adult saying anything, and forty repetitions is what actually builds the hand.

Skill practised: thumb-to-finger pinch strength, held and aimed

Treat it as hand work that happens to be satisfying, not as writing preparation. A two year old clips pegs because the spring goes click.

One a week, at your child's age

We publish one new activity a week at each age, in exactly this format. The peg grip is one of the things that is far easier to see in three seconds of video than to read in a paragraph.

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Questions parents ask

My two year old uses both hands. Is that fine?

Yes, and it is what most two year olds do for the first few weeks. Two hands is how the spring gets beaten while the pinch is still building, and the single-handed grip appears on its own once there is enough strength behind it.

Plastic pegs or wooden ones?

Whichever opens more easily, and that varies peg by peg rather than by material. Squeeze a handful yourself and keep the soft ones; a well-used peg beats a new one here.

How many pegs should I put out?

Twenty to thirty. Ten runs out in three minutes, and at this age the length of a sitting follows the size of the pile more closely than anything else you can change.

Is there any point once she can do it easily?

Move it onto a string with real washing on it. The same squeeze inside a job that matters to the household is what keeps a four year old at it, and it is the reason this activity survives past the age it was learnt.