Kitchen Tongs and Ice Tray Transfer
Your child picks up a cotton wool ball with kitchen tongs, carries it across the table and drops it into an ice cube tray, twelve cups in a row.
- 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-A052
What you need
All three things are in the kitchen already. The pair of tongs is the only choice that really decides how this goes, and shorter is better than you would guess.
- Small spring tongs, about 15 to 20 cmx1 Or: sugar tongs. Or salad servers held near the tip. Or a wooden clothes peg for the same squeeze in a smaller package. A short pair of tongs puts the tips close to the hand, so a wobble at the hand is a small wobble at the tip. Long barbecue tongs are a lever the wrong way round: a centimetre at the hand is three at the tip, and a two year old cannot aim them. Silicone tips also grip better than bare metal ones.
- An ice cube trayx1 Or: a bun tin, whose cups are about 6 cm and take much bigger objects. Or an egg box. A rigid plastic tray stays put while the tongs push down into a cup. A floppy silicone tray tips up as soon as the tongs lean on one end, and the whole thing goes over. Standard ice tray cups are about 3 cm across, which sets the size of what will fit in them.
- Cotton wool ballsx12 to 24 Or: jumbo pasta shells. Or 4 cm pom poms in a bun tin. Or walnuts in their shells. Cotton wool squashes slightly under the tongs, so a grip that is a few millimetres off still holds. A marble or a wooden bead slips out on the second try and the run stops there. Soft first, hard later.
- A small bowl for the loose onesx1 Or: a mug. Or the second half of a bun tin. A heap on the table rolls away from the tongs just as they close. In a bowl with a low side, the tongs can push down against something and the pick-up happens on the first attempt.
How to set it up
- Put the bowl of cotton wool on one side and the empty tray directly beside it, touching.20 sec
- Move two balls across yourself, slowly, squeezing with your whole hand so the grip is visible.20 sec
- Put the tongs down on the table, handle towards him, and sit back.10 sec
What to say and what to do
Say
Squeeze, then lift.
One in each hole.
- Then stop talking. The tray is doing the instructing from here.
Do
- Hold the tongs in a whole fist when you demonstrate, because that is the grip a two year old has and a pinched demonstration is not copyable yet.
- Sit beside him rather than opposite. Copying a hand that is the right way round is much easier than mirroring one.
- Leave the tray and the tongs out on a low shelf with the cotton wool already in the bowl. This is one that gets picked up unprompted.
Let be
- Fingers instead of tongs for half the balls. The tool gets picked up again when the tongs stop being the slow way to do it.
- Two or three balls stuffed into one cup. Filling a cup up is a perfectly good goal and it is the one he chose.
- The whole tray tipped out at the end. Emptying is the more interesting half at two, and it is also the reset for the next round.
What it looks like when it is working
- The squeeze happens before the tongs touch the ball, rather than the tongs arriving open and closing on nothing.
- She keeps hold of it all the way across instead of releasing halfway.
- The tray gets turned towards him so the far cups come within reach.
- The pace picks up towards the end of a run rather than tailing off.
What to expect at each age
At two
Holds the tongs in a whole fist, squeezes with the arm as much as the hand, and lands about one ball in three on the first try. Drops a fair number halfway across.
The thumb working against the fingers rather than the whole fist closing comes later, usually somewhere in the third year, and it builds through exactly this kind of repetition.
Lasts 4 to 8 minutes
At three
One hand, a proper squeeze, and most balls arrive where he aimed. Starts choosing which cup, and doing them in order along the row.
Tweezers and smaller objects are the natural step up, and they need a finger grip rather than a fist, which arrives around three and a half.
Lasts 8 to 15 minutes
At four
Moves small hard objects accurately, sorts two colours into two trays, and races herself. Invents the rules, like only the corners, or fill it backwards.
By four the tool is easy and the interest moves to what the tool is for, which is the point to hand over the salad tongs at dinner.
Lasts 10 to 20 minutes
When it goes sideways
Each of these is the tray telling you something about how the activity is set, and every fix is a swap rather than a talk.
He uses his fingers instead of the tongs
Fingers are faster, and the goal in his head is the ball in the cup rather than the tool in his hand. Often the tongs are also too stiff or too long for the squeeze he has.
Swap to a shorter, softer pair, or to a wooden clothes peg, and leave the fingers version alone while you do. The tool comes back once it stops being the hard way round.
The ball drops halfway across
Holding a squeeze while the arm travels is two jobs at once, and at two the squeeze usually lets go when the arm starts moving.
Push the bowl right up against the tray so the trip is 5 cm instead of 30. Widen the gap again over a few sittings.
The tray slides or tips over
Almost always a flexible silicone tray, which lifts at the far end as soon as the tongs press down on the near one.
Use a rigid plastic tray, or stick the silicone one to the table with two loops of masking tape underneath. A bun tin is heavy enough to stay put on its own.
It is over in two minutes
Twelve cups is twelve squeezes, and twelve squeezes is genuinely the whole thing at this age.
Put out two trays and thirty balls. The length of a sitting at two follows the size of the pile more closely than anything else you can change.
Making it harder
Four rungs, and the tongs only change once. Everything else is already in the kitchen.
Fingers into the cups
- Ready when
- This is where it starts, and it is not a lesser version.
- What changes
- No tool at all. Cotton wool from a bowl into the tray, one per cup.
- What is new
- One object per cup, and the idea that the tray is finished when every cup is full.
Tongs and cotton wool
- Ready when
- He fills the tray with his fingers without needing the rule repeated.
- What changes
- Short spring tongs, and the bowl pushed up against the tray.
- What is new
- Squeezing and holding the squeeze, which is the whole reason this activity exists.
Harder things, longer trip
- Ready when
- She keeps hold of a cotton wool ball all the way across most times.
- What changes
- Jumbo pasta shells or walnuts instead of cotton wool, and the bowl moved 30 cm away.
- What is new
- A grip that has to be accurate rather than just firm, because a hard object slips out when the tips are off centre.
Tweezers and sorting
- Ready when
- He moves pasta shells one at a time without dropping them.
- What changes
- Kitchen tweezers or a smaller pair of tongs, pom poms in two colours, and two trays to sort into.
- What is new
- A finger grip instead of a fist, with the head doing the sorting while the hand runs itself.
End on the tip-out rather than on a full tray. Tipping twelve balls back into the bowl is the bit that a two year old will do again, and it means the tray is loaded for tomorrow.
How to keep it safe
Two year olds still put things in their mouths, and that decides what goes in the bowl.
- Use objects bigger than a loo roll tube will swallow, about 4 cm across. Jumbo pasta shells, 4 cm pom poms and walnuts in their shells all clear that comfortably.
- Cotton wool squashes down to nothing, so it suits a child who has stopped mouthing things. If yours is still mouthing, pom poms in a bun tin do exactly the same job and do not compress.
- Sit at the table for this one. Tongs get waved before they get used, and two is the age for being nearby anyway.
- Use blunt-tipped tongs. Kitchen or salad tongs are right; anything with a point, like some cake or ice tongs, can go back in the drawer.
Why this helps
From the guide The claims here follow our guide on hands, pencils and the grip question.
Tongs are the first tool most children hold where the hand does one thing and something else happens a short distance away. The squeeze is at the fist, the grip is at the tip, and the two have to be held together in the mind for the length of a journey across a table. Pouring, cutting, brushing teeth and writing all share that structure, and this is about the simplest place to meet it.
The tray is the other half. It gives the run a shape with a visible end, so the work is not open-ended, and every cup is a small piece of evidence that the last squeeze worked. That is what lets a two year old do twelve of them without an adult saying anything, and twelve is where the hand actually changes.
Skill practised: a squeeze held steady while the hand travels
Nobody is practising cutlery here. A two year old does this because the tongs go click and the cup gets full, and the tool control builds underneath that.
One a week, at your child's age
We publish one new activity a week at each age, in exactly this format. The thing worth seeing here is the demonstration grip: a whole fist, squeezed slowly, which is much clearer in three seconds of video than in a sentence.
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Questions parents ask
Which tongs should I buy?
None, if there is a small pair in the drawer already. If you are choosing, take spring tongs about 15 to 20 cm long with silicone tips, because short tongs are easier to aim and soft tips grip better. Long barbecue tongs are the one pair that makes this genuinely hard at two.
She uses two hands on the tongs. Should I stop her?
No. Two hands is how most two year olds beat the spring while the squeeze is still building, and the one-handed version appears by itself once there is enough strength behind it. The same thing happens with clothes pegs and it settles over weeks rather than within a sitting.
What can I use instead of cotton wool?
Jumbo pasta shells, 4 cm pom poms, walnuts in their shells, or cut up sponge cubes about 3 cm square. Sponge is the most forgiving after cotton wool because it compresses. Save marbles, beads and dried beans for three and up, when the grip is accurate enough to hold something that does not give.
Can this be done with water?
Yes, and it is a good next step at three. Move soaked sponge cubes from a bowl of water into the tray with the tongs, on a tea towel. It adds weight and drips, which makes the same grip noticeably harder, and it is a natural bridge to pouring.