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There are hundreds of creative Christmas activities for kids out there on the web, but how many of them are actually designed to help your child as well as having fun?
This page gives you ideas for fun Christmas activities that can also help build your child's skills. I've rounded up my own activities as well as creative ideas from other therapy sites!
Kids are often motivated to do crafts that end in a nice decoration or gift, so combine that motivation with some focused activities and build their skills.
Therapists have come up with so many good Christmas activities for kids, I had to create a whole new page to contain them all!
So head over to my Fine Motor Christmas Activities page to be inspired and equipped! You will find lots of ideas for working on cutting skills, hand strength and finger skills!
Or try out my Christmas Angel Craft that uses pipe cleaners and pony beads
Do you want to give your child more scissor cutting practice using a Christmas theme? Are you struggling to find good scissor cutting templates?
OT Mom’s Christmas-themed cutting printables will give your child lots of cutting practice with lovely end products to build your child’s confidence!
There are 17 different scissor cutting crafts, all with photographed instructions and a variety of templates - over 40 templates in all!
Suitable for a range of skills - from preschoolers who are just learning to use scissors, all the way to early elementary kids who need more practice with their scissor skills.
Starting with simple snipping activities, the templates will enable your child to learn to cut on straight lines and then to cut out shapes.
All the activities are photographed so you and your child can see what you are working towards!
If you need to keep your child busy with a pencil-and-paper task, look for worksheets that build visual perceptual and visual motor skills. Here are a few suggestions:
Try some of my free printable Christmas Word Searches to boost figure-ground perception skills - this is particularly suitable for older kids.
Brainy Maze has a whole bunch of Christmas Mazes - excellent for figure ground and visual discrimination skills.
For those in the cold northern hemisphere at Christmas time, you often need to find ways to burn off your kids' energy indoors!
Have your kids move like animals up and down the hallway or around the table. Leopard Crawls and Crab Walks are particularly good for the core and shoulder muscles!
Marching is also a great way to warm up on a cold day as well as working on bilateral coordination skills - have your kids march around the house or on the spot between classroom activities.
My personal favorite when we have been cooped up indoors for whatever reason are these awesome printable brain breaks created by Your Therapy Source.
They only cost a couple dollars but when your brain is fried (LOL) and you can't think what to do, having your kids grab one of the cards and do the exercises can be a life-saver!
Check out my review of the Winter Brain Breaks here!
Paper crafts are inexpensive activities which give your child lots of practice with cutting, tearing, tracing, pasting and folding paper. Great for working on fine motor, coordination and planning skills!
Head over and view my Christmas paper craft ideas with some free printable templates you can use!
Or check out my simpler ideas for preschoolers...
Baking and "playing" with food can be so much fun, and kids can benefit so much from time in the kitchen with you! Get them involved in a few edible Christmas activities like making cookies and fruit kebabs/kebobs...
You can especially look out for recipes that involve:
I have my own yummy cookie recipes on my page about the benefits of
baking with kids, but there are lots
of other awesome cookie recipes out there.
Your Kids OT has a lovely reindeer gingerbread cookie recipe you can try!
You can find some lovely Baking sets for kids on AmazonHave you tried making fruit kebabs with your kids? (Maybe you call them kebobs, depending on where you are in the world LOL!)
With adult supervision, cutting soft fruit into chunks (with a safe knife) and then skewering them onto a kebab stick is good for eye hand coordination. Supervise your child at all times and make sure the kebab sticks are not sharp enough to hurt them.
Bananas, strawberries, melons and grapes are easy fruits to get onto a skewer, although bananas need to be eaten almost immediately. A great festive party food to serve with yogurt for dipping.
Thank you for visiting my site! I hope you were as inspired by these fun Christmas activities for kids as I was!
If this page was helpful, please share it with your friends!
Here are links to some of the other free Christmas resources on my site - have fun browsing them all!
If you are looking for a daily advent lesson and simple Christmas craft activity you can do with your preschooler, then I really recommend Truth in the Tinsel. My kids thoroughly enjoyed the lessons and hands-on activities in this advent e-book when they were younger.
Truth in the Tinsel includes links to Scriptures, simple craft tutorials, step-by-step talking points, and craft templates to walk your preschool kids through the entire Christmas story. The countdown begins with the prophecies in Isaiah, through the stories in the Gospels, all the way to Jesus’ ultimate goal for coming to earth.
View Truth in the Tinsel now!
Just $9.99 for a resource you can use over and over again!
This is an affiliate link to an advent product I have used and love. If you purchase through this link, I may receive a small commission.
You are, however, under no obligation to purchase anything!
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