You can teach toddlers to do almost anything. Can they use tongs? Yes, they can! From toddlerhood many children are able to wrap their little fingers around the tongs and squeeze them just enough to pickup their desired item and transfer it to a bowl or other location.

Using mini tongs is a great way to add some fine motor skill work to an activity. Mini tongs are fantastic for developing:

• fine motor skills
• coordination
• concentration
• finger and hand strength.

You can add mini tongs to almost any food preparation activity. While many toddlers will just ignore them and use their fingers and may even eat the food as they cut, grate, slice, prepare it, the thing is sometimes... they will actually use the tongs! So keep on offering them, keep on putting the tongs out!!

Today Otto (at 26 months) has used the tongs when transferring:

• boiled egg slices
• sliced strawberry
• grated cheese 

Other ideas include transferring:

• sliced apple
• sliced cucumber
• sliced banana
• sliced mushroom
• any chopped foods
• zucchini noodles/strips
• grated zucchini or carrot

We can also put the tongs out next to a shared plate for the children to serve themselves snack. 

We use little metal tongs that are like sugar tongs. They are super easy for little hands to use, they are just the right size, ours are four inches long. You can find a similar type here.

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