connecting the bottom of a zipper

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When kids are learning to fasten zippers, they first learn to move the zipper back and forth on items such as a purse or little zippered bag, or the little pig bank that I made. This is an activity that uses two hands and good hand positioning, and is linear so it usually is learned pretty quickly. When zipping up a jacket, the actual act of pulling the zipper up is usually learned fairly quickly as well, but it is much harder to learn to connect the two pieces of the zipper at the bottom of a jacket.

When I am working with kids, it isn’t always possible to have a jacket available to practice with, and it isn’t always that fun. You can practice with the commercially available zipper and button boards, but I have found them to be challenging as they do not move freely in order to see and figure out how to connect the two parts of the zipper. I have wanted something different for quite a while, and was working on making something with a whole bunch of different parts but then decided to keep it simple and focus on one thing rather than everything.

Here we have the Connecting Zipper Container. It has a zipper that disconnects, and inside is a soft box made of felt. You can place objects inside for motivation or use it to carry things in. I kind of use it as a tent for my Munchy Ball, and you have to zip up the tent so he can take a nap. You can come up with all kinds of creative things to put inside to motivate kids to work on fastening the two sides of a zipper.