Holiday Craft Ideas

Now that the kids are home for the holidays, here are some great craft ideas to keep them occupied while working on some skills.

1) Make a reindeer puppet - works on fine motor, visual-motor, and finger isolation skills.

Trace your child’s hands and cut out for the antlers. Cut out a circle and either color it red, use red sprinkles, or cut it from red construction paper. Draw a mouth or cut it out of construction paper and place appropriately on the brown paper bag. Make sure you glue on the side of the bag that will open for the puppet. Have your child write their name or draw shapes on the body of the bag, depending on what skill you are working on. 

2)  Draw a candy cane - teaches patterns, works on coloring inside the lines, and cutting.
 
Draw a candy cane outline and color it red, white, red, white, etc. Have your child cut it out and hang it up for decoration.  

3)  Fake snow! -  works on getting messy and playing in various textures.

Decorate shaving cream with red and green sprinkles. Make snowmen in the snow to work on circles, triangles, letters, numbers, writing their name, etc.  Anything is fun when playing in the snow!

4)  Christmas or New Year’s Day cards - works on writing sentences, spacing words, line placement.

Make cards and decorate them on the outside with sprinkles, Christmas trees, or ornaments from construction paper. Have your child write a message on the inside of the card.

5)  Ornaments – addresses coloring and cutting skills.

Have fun making ornaments out of construction paper. Decorate them by coloring, drawing shapes, sprinkles, etc. Then have your child cut out the ornaments. Hang them on the wall for decoration or on the tree!

6)  Make Christmas cookies - allows them to get messy and touch different textures.

Have your child assist with the flour, rolling (bilateral skills), and using different cut-outs.  If working on letters or numbers, then place M&Ms for each number. For example, the first cookie would have 1 M&M on it, the 2nd cookie would have 2 M&Ms, and so on.
 
These holiday craft ideas will allow your child to have fun while working on skills as well as providing some great one-on-one time!