Cereal Box and Bread Clip, Counting Frame, Abacus

I had to chuckle, at a comment yesterday, from Natalie at Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns, asking if I had taken Debbie's bread clip and tie dilemma, over at Children Grow, Children Explore, Children Learn, as a personal challenge.

I had planned yesterday's peanut pal craft (which used bread ties), before I read Debbie's post (click the link above to read it).

But, her post did get me thinking about the large amount of bread clips, congregating in my own kitchen, and on the sad state of my cupboards, which could use a good cleaning out, too.

After all the Thanksgiving, and Christmas baking, cleaning out the cupboards is going to be quite a job. Dealing with the bread clips (at least 100 of them), was much easier.

I started by cutting the front off of a tall cereal box. It's important the box be at least 1 foot tall.



I trimmed, and tape the top closed, for stability.

Then, since my box had printing on the inside, I glued a piece of construction paper on the inside of the box.


Using a ruler, I drew a line down the center of the sides, as a guide, and marked off each inch.


With a hole punch, I punched 10, evenly spaced holes, at the inch marks, on each side. Actually, I made 11, because I wasn't sure if I'd want to go higher, or lower in the box, but I only used 1o of the holes.


I strung 10 bread clips (of the same color), onto a wood dowel, 1/2 centimeter in diameter, repeating until I had 10 clip laden dowels.


Then, I threaded the ends of the dowels through the holes in the box.


I secured the dowels in place, by wrapping pieces of tape around them, on the outside of the box.

Finally, I added number labels to each dowel, indicating the amount each clip represents on that dowel. Children, already familiar with counting frames, probably wouldn't need the labels.

It can be played with standing up, or laid down, but we found the clips were easier to move quickly, when the box was laid down.


Now, with the fun out of the way, I'm off to face the cupboards.

P.S. - I realized as we started to play with it, that there should only be 9 clips on each dowel, and so we removed one from each.

It's great to be a homeschooler.