Christmas Activities For Kids

More than just glitter and glue, these OT-inspired Christmas activities for kids will help your child build real skills while having seasonal fun. As an occupational therapist and a homeschooling mom, I love it when an activity does both!

From strengthening hands with fine motor crafts, to developing visual perception skills, enjoy the memories you make as you work on Christmas activities together.

In each skill-defined section, you'll find a quick-start idea you can do today, as well as links to more in-depth pages across my site.

Have fun!

christmas activities for kids

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Key Takeaways For Busy Parents:

  • Fun Plus Skills: Use your child’s holiday excitement as a motivational tool to develop skills needed for learning!
  • Strengthen Hands: Simple crafts like threading beads, can help develop fine motor skills. 
  • Start Simply With Scissors: Build your child’s scissor skills confidence with simple snipping activities before moving onto cutting along lines and cutting out shapes.
  • Sense the Season: Use a Christmas stocking as a “mystery bag” and add cinnamon to your playdough.
  • Get Active Indoors: Obstacle courses and brain breaks are great ways to develop gross motor skills while stuck indoors!

What skill do you want to focus on?

Fine Motor Christmas Activities

Fine motor skills help your child hold a pencil, do a button and tie their shoes. You can help strengthen little hands and fingers with these Christmas-themed fine motor crafts for home or classroom!

Here's a simple craft you can set up in minutes!

Quick Start: Beaded Candy Cane Ornaments

Materials Needed: Red & White Pony Beads#Ad, Pipe Cleaners#Ad (Chenille Stems) cut in half

Instructions:

  1. Set out the beads in a small container
  2. Thread the beads onto a ½ pipe cleaner, alternating colors, or try a 2-1 pattern
  3. Continue until the pipe cleaner is almost full
  4. Twist the ends to secure the beads. Bend it into a cane shape and it’s ready to hang!
preschool christmas beading activity for fine motor skills - candy cane Candy Cane Beading Activity

Try this: use brown pony beads#Ad to create a shepherd's crook for a nativity theme

Benefits: In addition to fine motor skills, threading beads also helps your child develop eye-hand coordination and bilateral coordination (using both hands together).

Pro Tip: For more ideas to build hand strength and dexterity, visit my main page of Fine Motor Christmas Ideas or try my Christmas Paper Crafts.

  • Need a complete, printable solution? My Christmas Activity Pages will give you 30 pages of tracing, crumpling and fine finger activities (and instructions) that you can use over and over again!
More than 30 fine motor Christmas activity pages, including Christmas mazes!30 Printable Christmas Activity Pages!

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Christmas Scissor Skills Practice

The key to learning to use scissors is to start with simple activities and build confidence! Start with snipping, then progress to cutting on straight lines and then cutting out shapes.

Quick Start: Snip A Peek-A-Boo Christmas Picture

This quick snipping activity can add interest to a Christmas picture – great for a Christmas card or for decorations! This is a sweet Christmas activity for preschoolers.

Materials needed: Christmas picture (we used old Christmas cards), green construction paper for “grass”

Instructions: 

  1. Cut the green construction paper to be an inch or two narrower than the picture
  2. Have your child make small snips all along the long edge of the green paper to create a “fringe”
  3. Stick the grass onto the picture
peekaboo Christmas snipping activity for preschoolChristmas Snipping Activity

Pro Tip: If your child is unsure where to snip, then draw short straight lines to guide them. If your child finds this tricky, then take a look at their scissor grasp, and check out my scissor cutting tips and techniques for more guidance.

Get this Christmas paper craft and scissor cutting printable pack and start today!Start Today With This Paper Craft & Scissor Cutting Pack!

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Sensory Christmas Activities

When your child engages all their senses, it helps them process information and learn more about their world. Here are some fun sensory activities with a Christmas theme!

Quick Start: Christmas Stocking Touch Perception Game

Hide some objects in a Christmas stocking and have your child identify them by feel.

  • Younger kids: use very different objects, like a spoon, toy car, block, comb etc
  • Older kids: use pattern block shapes and have your child hunt for the shapes to build the picture they are working on

Pro Tip: If your child struggles, try some of the other tactile discrimination activities on my site for additional practice.

Add More Sensory To Their Day:

  • Add 2 teaspoons of cinnamon to your homemade playdough recipe for some aromatic play.
  • Have your child knead dough for your baked Christmas treats – kneading provides calming proprioceptive input.

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Gross Motor Christmas Activities  

For those cold, miserable-weather days, you need ways to burn energy indoors! Gross motor activities help work the large muscles of the body to build essential stability and coordination skills.

Quick Start: Jingle Bell Obstacle Course

Work on upper body strength, motor planning and body awareness with a fun indoor obstacle course!

Materials Needed: varies according to the space and resources you have on hand, but you can use pillows, blankets, chairs, tables, painters tape, sidewalk chalk, and a few jingle bells#Ad.

Instructions: 

  1. Pile up pillows and cushions to create hills to crawl over.
  2. Drape blankets and sheets over chairs and tables to create tunnels to crawl through.
  3. Use sidewalk chalk or painters tape to mark out a path to balance along.
  4. Place the jingle bells at the end of the course.

The goal is to complete the course, grab a jingle bell and run back to the beginning without the bell being heard.

Pro Tip: Set the challenge according to your child’s need and ability, and change the exercise every round. Here are some ideas:

  • Upgrade from crawl to leopard crawl through the tunnel
  • Upgrade from walking along the line to a heel-toe walk along the line
  • Upgrade from running back to the start, to hopping, skipping or jumping back
  • Or do a crab walk with the jingle bell on the tummy
child doing a leopard crawl through an obstacle courseDoing A Leopard Crawl

For more indoor Christmas gross motor exercises, try these December Brain Breaks#Ad - great for small spaces, multiple kids and tight budgets!

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Skill-Building Christmas Printables

Need quiet, focused Christmas activities for kids to do at home or in school? Look for worksheets and printables that help build important visual perception and visual motor skills, and are not just coloring pages.

Quick Start: Free Downloads

Download these free Christmas word searches to use today! Your child will be developing figure-ground perception as they search for words in the puzzle.

Need more Christmas printables?

  • My Printable Nativity Word Search Pack offers 23 unique word searches ranging from easy to challenging. Perfect for the whole family or a multi-age classroom!
  • Try these December Visual Perceptual Puzzles#Ad: Get 20 visual motor, visual spatial, visual closure and visual perceptual worksheets with a December theme.
  • Teachers and Therapists: check out the Bumper December Christmas Bundle#Ad from Your Therapy Source! Get 25 separate digital downloads that encourage fine motor, gross motor, visual perceptual and handwriting skills. 
23 Unique Bible Christmas Word SearchesPrint a variety of simple and challenging word searches for kids!

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Related Christmas Activities for Kids On My Site!

  • Looking for a gift that will help to develop your child's visual perception and spatial perception skills as well as being fun, then take a look at this selection of some of the best learning gifts for kids!

Our kids learn and grow through playful moments, and doing Christmas activities with our kids is a great way to foster their growth. Plan ahead and try some of these ideas with your child this year.

From my OT-Mom heart, have fun learning together this Christmas!

pin this page - lots of Christmas activities that build kids skills while having fun!

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