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I recently picked up a bag of brightly colored plastic straws from the dollar store. We used a couple of them for hours with the snowball oral motor games and use them for drinking smoothies, but yesterday, I had an interesting thought. Could we make a skipping rope out of straws?





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To make this easy DIY skipping rope, we used:





First, my four year old cut the straws into pieces using the scissors to make straw beads.

Next, I tied a knot at one end of the nylon cord. Then I wrapped duct tape around that end, leaving the knot exposed, multiple times until a nice, comfortable handle was formed. Once the handle was made, four year old K started threading on the straw beads, one at a time. Threading is a great way to work on fine motor skills.

Once all the beads were threaded onto the cord, I had to create a second handle with the duct tape. I started wrapping the tape the end of the cord over and over until a second handle was formed. I then knotted the other end of the cord. You must remember to knot the cord to make sure it doesn't slip through the duct tape handle. Then your skipping rope is complete!





Then it's time to skip and jump! It works awesome and reminds me of those hard plastic skipping ropes that I used in elementary school. They were red and white plastic beads that clicked when they hit the floor and left welts on your body if you were unsuccessful at jumping over it.





Jumping provides great sensory input for kids, so try these other jumping games:









I figured that it would work and if not, then at least I would be able to give my youngest some extra fine motor practice. Especially since he loves anything that involves scissors.Well, it worked beautifully and in about 10 minutes or less, we had anOh and just to keep things real, I forgot that a basket of unfolded laundry was in the background...ahem...anyway, back to those fine motor skills in action.