November 2013

Easy Last Minute Advent Calendar for Families

November 19, 2019November 29, 2013 by Colleen Beck OTR/L

Use these easy last minute Advent calendar ideas for families as a way to connect this season. This advent calendar is a craft the kids will love to create each year while developing fine motor skills and making memories!

For Christmas activity ideas with a therapy punch, use these 25 days of Christmas play ideas. Paste them onto the Christmas lights in the Easy last minute Advent calendar below.

Does your family made an Advent Calendar each year? We love to fill our Advent Calendar with activities for the whole family, and designed to make memories. This year, we were a little late getting our calendar filled with activates and figured there are so many other busy families who are in the same boat! We needed an Easy, Last Minute, and Home-made Advent calendar. This calendar does just that. This was so easy to throw together, and with a little help form the kids, hang in our home for festive Christmas décor! We chose activities that are part of are usual Holiday traditions, so that it would be easy to add into our days leading up to Christmas. We really don’t need to have a huge to-do list every day and make more work for our selves. This Christmas Advent Calendar is perfect for busy families and will make lasting memories!

{Note: This post contains affiliate links. In other words, this blog will receive monetary compensation when any purchases are made through the links in this post. Our opinions and ideas are in no way affected. As always, we thank you for your support and community here at Sugar Aunts.}

Easy Last Minute Advent Calendar

To make our calendar, I cut light shaped pieces of red and green Construction Paper , and little black squares. These were by no means exact AT ALL! Just easy and quick. A little Glue
to hold the black squares in place, and the lights were done.

Advent Calendar Activities for Families

The kids and I came up with fun Christmas activities that we normally do every year to write on our lights. This is memory making right here, folks! With a black Marker, I wrote out our favorite traditions…

Decorate the Christmas Tree

Eat a candy cane

Donate toys

Visit Santa Claus

Watch Frosty the Snowman movie

Make cookies

Play with Christmas Play Dough

Make Christmas cards

Drink hot cocoa

Deliver treats to neighbors

…What holiday traditions are part of your family?

A little tape and Red Yarn, our lights were strung! We used clothes pins to attach our activity lights for ease and for the one reason that may make our holiday very simple…

we can easily change the activities around based on what our day looks like. Maybe on a certain day, Christmas play dough is just NOT going to happen. Switch it out for Reading a Christmas Book.

See, this really is the easiest Advent calendar for busy families!

Our Christmas Advent calendar ends with a star and a special activity…Singing Happy Birthday to baby Jesus!

So, we’re heading into the Christmas season with our last minute, home-made Advent calendar all ready to go!

Thanksgiving Felt Board Patterns Direction Following Turkey

October 10, 2023November 26, 2013 by Colleen Beck OTR/L

This Thanksgiving Felt Board activity was just the thing we needed one afternoon when Little Niece and Nephew were at our house. It was a super cold day and we were happy to stay inside warm and cozy playing and having fun with a few Thanksgiving activities!

Thanksgiving Felt Board

This felt board was super easy to put together. I have a big sheet of orange colored fleece fabric that we use for all kinds of activities and play. It makes the perfect fuzzy background for felt play, pretend play when we need to have an impromptu living room teddy bear picnic, and the perfect baby doll blanket!

This time we used our fleece to make an easel cover for our Felt Board Direction Following Turkey.

We’ve been doing a lot of turkey crafts and activities leading up to Thanksgiving, and this one was even more fun for the littler ones. Baby Girl (age 2) and Little Nephew (age 2) both loved moving the felt pieces all over the board. And worked on fine motor skills and direction following and patterning at the same time!

This post contains affiliate links.

Just a few supplies are needed for this activity.

The Orange Fleece worked perfectly to hold the felt pieces of our turkey.
The rest of the turkey was easy to make using Assorted felt pieces.
A few brown circles, feathers of different colors, little turkey feet, a beak, and a wattle and our turkey was ready for creating!

I snipped a few little pieces of felt and glued them to the backs of Googley eyes. Then the googly eyes could stick to the fleece.

The fleece was perfect to throw over our Easel. The fleece stayed in place pretty well without sliding much. With the material up on an included surface, the kids were able to manipulate the pieces of the turkey while using an extended wrist.

This positioning of their hand while managing small pieces prepares them for handwriting with a proper position of the wrist and fingers while holding a pencil.

I put one turkey together so the Toddlers could see where all of the pieces went.

This task required visual scanning and direction following. We put our turkeys together with multi-step directions to add a little difficulty to the task.

Little Guy (age 4) worked on some patters with the feathers. We used an AB pattern for our turkey feathers.

Little Nephew is a smarty when it comes to identifying colors. He told us all of the colors of the feathers easily!

Working those little pieces was a great fine motor task for these guys!

They needed to use a pincer grasp to pinch the littlest pieces, all while maintaining that extended wrist.

We had such fun day with our Turkey patterns, direction following, and fine motor play. This would be an easy activity to put together in these last days before Thanksgiving!

Playful Ways to Learn the Alphabet

April 4, 2022November 23, 2013 by Colleen Beck OTR/L

This week on Share It Saturday, we are highlighting Playful Ways to Learn the Alphabet. We love to create unique learning experiences for our kids. Not only is it a great way to encourage participation and develop multiple skills, it’s just fun! Learning letters (and the whole alphabet) in a playful way ensures retention of letter formation, the order of the ABC’s, and encourages children to actively ENJOY learning letters and pre-reading skills! Learning the alphabet in a playful way can be fun with a little creativity. Check out the links below for awesome ways to Play and learn the alphabet!

This post contains affiliate links.

Playful Ways to Learn the Alphabet

DIY Montessori Moveable Alphabet from Moms Have Questions Too

Letter Learning with Bottle Caps

Tracing Letters Handwriting Practice

Squish and Seek Sight Words from Playdough to Plato

Letter Learning with Dyed Alphabet Pasta

Musical Letters from Reading Confetti

Golf Tee Letter Hammering

Letter Ice Muffins

Alphabet Chicka Chicka Book Boom Tree from Adventures At Home With Mum

Magnetic Letters on the Garage Door

Gratitude Leaf Garland

September 26, 2019November 22, 2013 by Colleen Beck OTR/L

We make a Thankful Tree every year where the kids tell me the things they are thankful for and I write out the leaves. We have our Thankful Tree up on the dining room table all November up until Thanksgiving. Check out last year’s Thanksgiving Tree. This year we went a different route with our thankful leaves and made a Gratitude Garland. We still had the fall colored leaves and the kids told me all of the things they are thankful for. We strung our garland along the wall in the dining room so we can see the leaves while we’re eating dinner. We save our leaves from each year in envelopes so that we can read through them together and remember the things we were thankful for each year. This is one of our favorite Thanksgiving traditions!

Gratitude Leaf Garland for Thanksgiving by Sugar Aunts

Garland Leaf Garland

I cut out a bunch of leaves in nice fall colors and set out the pen so we were ready to go once Big Sister got home from school one day. The kids started telling me all of the things they are thankful for. My favorites: noodles, God, Jesus, hot dogs, and especially the handwritten-by-Big Sister “thankful mom” and “thankful dad” leaves!

This is the easiest family craft to make. All you need is Construction Paper, Markers, and Yarn. A few leaves cut from the paper and you are all set. This would be a great scissor skill activity for the kids too if they would cut out the leaves.

Big Sister wrote out a few of her leaves this year. Love that new writer handwriting!

I LOVE pulling out the envelopes of leaves from each year and reading through them with the kids! We keep them in our fall decorations bins in storage, so once it’s time to decorate for fall, we have them handy each year.

These leaves will be something that I save forever!

Do you have any Thanksgiving traditions to share gratitude? Do you make a thanksgiving tree or garland?

Fine Motor Sun Catchers

October 10, 2023November 20, 2013 by Colleen Beck OTR/L

The dyed pumpkin seeds have returned in this easy, last minute, thrown-together craft! A fine motor play activity turned into a cute sun catcher craft. We played with sequins and contact paper before nap time one day recently, and it’s a great Halloween occupational therapy activity. With a little child-led art, the sequins-on-contact paper turned into a pumpkin seed/sequins sun catcher!

This post includes affiliate links.

Supplies needed for this sequin fine motor activity and sun catcher craft include Sequins, Clear Contact Paper, pumpkin seeds, and Food Colors .

Sequin Fine Motor Activity

We started out with this little fine motor play activity for the littlest kids in the house before their nap time one afternoon. I put out squares of clear contact paper and a scatter of sequins and let them go to it! I showed them how to pick up the sequins and stick them onto the contact paper.

Baby Girl and Little Niece and Nephew are two years old and I wasn’t sure how this would go over with them. They both really liked sticking those little sequins on the sticky paper! (There was a lot of tongues sticking out too…you know when kids stick their tongues out when they cut with scissors or reeeeallly concentrate on something? LOVE that cuteness!)

Pumpkin Seed and Sequin Sun Catcher

Then Little Nephew pulled out some of the Dyed Pumpkin Seeds that we have been playing with a lot lately. He started sticking them onto the contact paper and making a pretty little art collage!

These little buggers are so easy to make…just a few drops of food dye into a baggie of dry seeds and you’ve got an instant sorting, pattern making, art medium for play and learning!

One funny thing, when the dyed pumpkin seeds were stuck to the contact paper and then moved, the dye peeled off a little. We stuck another square of contact paper on top of our sun catchers and hung the art to our dining room window. Cute, easy sun catcher fun!

Note: Be sure to monitor closely children when laying with small items such as sequins and pumpkin seeds with young children. All children are different and an activity like this one may not be appropriate for some. Always use caution when doing one of the activities found on our website and social media communities. Have fun!

Sight Word Sticky Easel

October 10, 2023November 19, 2013 by Colleen Beck OTR/L

This was a fun post to write, and more importantly it was fun to PLAY this one! We made this Sight Word Sticky board on the easel to practice a few of Big Sister’s sight words with a fun fine motor twist. Big Sister, Little Guy, Baby Girl, and Little Niece and Nephew all enjoyed this sticky board easel activity.

At one point there were hands everywhere sticky leaves up on the sticky board. We used different colored leaves to help the littler kids to learn some of their colors. Big Sister liked reading the words as she went along sticking letters up on the tree. We went with a leaf theme, but this sight word activity could be modified to so many different themes, all using a few items. Check out what we did…

We received the books from Set 1 for beginner readers from BOB Books to review. We were so excited when the package arrived with our book set.

Big Sister opened the first book up as soon as she got home from school and started reading her way through it! This was her first real book that she’s read through by herself and was so happy that she could do it! You could see her confidence overflowing when she read that book! So what did she do then? She pulled out the next book and read that one too! This was such an amazing experience for us both. She was all smiles when she finished those books!

The fact that similar characters are in each book helps with carry over with new readers. Each book is only 12 pages, so it’s short enough that she didn’t lose interest or become overwhelmed. I loved the consistent sounds and words in each book. These beginner books are just what I have been looking for as Mom of a new reader. I wanted a book that would allow her to have confidence so she wouldn’t give up as she learns to decipher words. These books were just that! We are so excited to be working our way through the books and can’t wait to get started on the next one!

Sight Word Sticky Easel

We made this activity to go along with some of the words in the third book, as well as some of the words Big Sister has recently learned in school.

For this activity, we used (Amazon affiliate links) Foam Sheets , Clear Contact Paper, and our Crayola Magnetic Double-Sided Easel
to do this activity. First, I cut little leaf shapes from different colors of the foam sheets. I wrote out the words on the leaves. They were in one of the bins on the easel and ready to grab.

For the tree, I drew a quick tree shape on the non-sticky side of the contact paper. I pulled the backing from the contact paper and attached it to the easel with some tape.

The kids LOVED this! There were hands in every direction as they stuck leaves to the contact paper.

Big Sister would tell us the words on the tree and the younger kids would tell us the colors. Little Nephew and Baby Girl played with this much longer than everyone else, just pulling the leaves from the contact paper and sticking them back up again.

Reaching up to the easel and placing the leaves on the contact paper was a great fine motor activity for them.

Later, I found an interesting thing stuck to the contact paper…

cheese! So funny!

Leaves Craft and Fall Leaf Books

September 26, 2019November 18, 2013 by Colleen Beck OTR/L

We made a Leaf Placemat Craft recently for a play date craft. This was so much fun that when we came home from the play group, the kids wanted to make more! Our dining room table is looking pretty festive with our leaf place mats. We enjoyed going out on a nature hunt to collect lots of leaves of different size and color from the yard. And now, it’s nice to see them every day at every meal! This was such an easy craft for younger kids and a hit at the play group. One day, I was able to set up a little after-nap snack and book time, using our leaf place mats and a few new favorite books from the library. 123 We read the books and had a little Cheerio snack on our easy leaf placemats. Read more below to see what we did and our book recommendations:

Leaves Craft

We started by collecting different colored leaves from around the yard in lots of colors and sizes. Luckily (or unluckily, depending on who is working the rake…) we have a bunch of HUGE trees and loads of leaves to jump in, play with, and collect. We put our leaves in big trays to dry and take to our play group.

The craft was SO easy and perfect for toddlers. We cut sheets of Clear Contact Paper
into large sheets that would be able to fold over to placemat size. This was definitely NOT accurate or precise. Each of our placemats are slightly different sizes and as unique as the child making them!

Be sure to grab the clear contact paper and not the one with a white backing so the leaves will show through both sides.

This was fun for the kids to scatter leaves around on the contact paper. Big Sister made a few shapes and pictures with her leaves. (Perfect for one of the books we read!)

Fall Leaf Books

The books we had from the library were fun fall books, just right for a leaf placemat snack!

Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert is such a fun book, showing leaves as they move across the land in the breeze. They pictures of the leaves change forms as the book progresses and Big Sister really like pointing out the man, or cow, or bird made from leaves on each page. This book was perfect for our leaf craft project!

Leaves
by David Ezra Stein is such a cute story about a bear who is surprised about the falling leaves. This book was fun for us because we enjoy seeing the leaves fall from our trees and we love to try to catch them as they fall.

Autumn Orange (Know Your Colors)
by Christianne C. Jones was a good book for us and a fun read. Especially Baby Girl liked this one (who is just learning her colors and thinks every color is purple 🙂 !

It’s not too late to grab up a few fall themed books and create a leaf craft before the craziness of the Christmas season is on us! What are your favorite fall books?

Color Sorting with Dyed Pumpkin Seeds

September 26, 2019November 15, 2013 by Colleen Beck OTR/L

Playing with Pumpkin seeds and Color Sorting with Dyed Pumpkin Seeds were something I thought about as soon as we carved our jack-o-lanterns this year. We sorted the seeds into a super sensory playing activity that ended up having a great learning component too! We ended up using our dyed pumpkin seeds in so many playful ways over the last few weeks. We’ve sorted, created patterns, made collage art, and more. We will definitely be dying (as well as roasting) our pumpkin seeds every year from now on!

(Note: This post contains affiliate links. That means we receive monetary compensation when purchases are made through the links on this blog. Our opinions and ideas are in no way affected. As always, we thank you for your support and community on Sugar Aunts.)

Have you ever dyed pumpkin seeds before? This was our first time, so it was a learning experience. And, we haven’t even made too many batches of roasted seeds either that we LOVED. We posted the question to our Facebook page asking for roasted seed recipes. We got some great replies and ended up trying a little dying and a little roasting!

(we roasted our seeds for eating with a little olive oil, salt, and paprika. Perfection!)

To dye the seeds, I put a handful of dry seeds in a plastic baggie and added a few drops of food coloring. All it took was a few shakes of the bag to cover the seeds. I wasn’t sure if vinegar would be needed to get the dye to “stick” to the seeds, but it seemed to work ok without. A few kiddos enjoyed shaking baggies (and jumping around the house with them…)! We made blue, yellow, and green…only because those were the colors of liquid food dye I had on hand. Once they were covered with color, we poured the seeds onto a cookie sheet covered with paper towels and let them dry.

Drying required a full 24 hours and a couple of re-scattering to make sure all of the seeds were uncovered. Once they were dry, we were ready to play!

Color Sorting with Dyed Pumpkin Seeds

This was a great activity for Baby Girl and Little Nephew (both 2 years old). I had this set up one day after the kids woke up from their naps. A few of our The First Years 4 Pack Take And Toss Spill Proof Cups
were perfect to match the colors of our seeds.

They had so much fun with this! Little Nephew really enjoyed this activity. He played for a long time sorting the seeds (and a lot of not sorting, too…just dropping the seeds into cups).

There were a lot of hands involved in this activity. It was a good thing we had three different colors and cups!

Watch this space to see what else we did with our colorful pumpkin seeds!

Turkey Napkin Rings

November 9, 2020November 12, 2013 by Colleen Beck OTR/L

Another Turkey craft happened in our house! This time we made a Turkey Napkin Ring. And just in time for your Thanksgiving dinner place settings 🙂 This is another cardboard turkey craft that uses a recycled paper roll…much like this toilet paper roll turkey post that we updated recently. Today’s cardboard tube turned into a turkey napkin ring that would look amazing at the family Thanksgiving table.

Turkey napkin ring that kids can make! This Thanksgiving table craft is so much fun for the kids table!

Thanksgiving Turkey Silverware Napkin Rings

Turkey Napkin Rings

We started with a paper roll and a hole punch. The holes were easy to punch toward the ends of the roll. To reach the center, you will have to bend the roll a bit and double up the cardboard while punching the holes. That was pretty tough to do, but not impossible.

I think next time we make these, I would cut the paper tube to maybe 3 to 4 inches long. Then, it would be easy to punch holes along the length of the tube.

This turkey napkin ring craft is a great way for kids to develop fine motor skills.

Big Sister took care of pushing the feathers into the holes. We used fall colored pipe cleaners to give the turkey a fall festive look. We cut the pipe cleaners in half first.

Cutting pipe cleaners is a great hand strengthening activity for kids working on hand strength and scissor skills. They need to squeeze the scissors with a gross grasp and really encourage strengthening of the arches of the hand.

Kids can make this turkey napkin ring craft with a cardboard tube and pipe cleaners.

After our pipe cleaners were cut in half, Big Sister folded the pipe cleaner in half (without creasing the fold) and pushed both ends of into the holes. Another great fine motor activity!

She was able to use a tripod grasp to push the pipe cleaner into the holes…and had a lot of fun! We doubled up a few of the holes for extra feathers (and a little more restiveness when she pushed the pipe cleaners into the holes…extra fine motor work!)

Use cardboard rolls for crafts like this turkey napkin ring that kids can make for Thanksgiving dinner.

The turkey is looking pretty good! Glue a couple of googly eyes and a beak. We used a scrap of foam sheet cut into a little triangle.

Turkey craft for kids turns into a turkey napkin ring for the dinner table.

Big Sister added the wattle to the turkey with a marker…and added a little red dot to the beak. “That is his nostril, Mom.”

How cute is this toilet paper roll craft that turns into a paper roll napkin ring.

Pretty cute!

Use this turkey napkin ring craft as the Thanksgiving kids table decorations! — Kids

Wrap a set of silverware in a paper towel (or fabric) and the turkey is ready to join the table settings!

Use the turkey napkin ring craft as a Thanksgiving kids table craft.

This would make a great Thanksgiving kids table craft for kids to make and build right at the kids table!

It’s also a great fine motor activity for kids using a toilet paper roll!

Wouldn’t this look completely cute along with the Turkey Juice Box covers from yesterday’s post??

For more Thanksgiving activities for kids, try this Thanksgiving Fine Motor Kit. It’s on sale now and covers handwriting, pencil control, coloring, scissor skills, bilateral coordination, eye-hand coordination, and more:

Thanksgiving Fine Motor Kit…on sale now!

Colleen Beck, OTR/L has been an occupational therapist since 2000, working in school-based, hand therapy, outpatient peds, EI, and SNF. Colleen created The OT Toolbox to inspire therapists, teachers, and parents with easy and fun tools to help children thrive. Read her story about going from an OT making $3/hour (after paying for kids’ childcare) to a full-time OT resource creator for millions of readers. Want to collaborate? Send an email to contact@theottoolbox.com.

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How to make Sensory Bottles for Self Regulation

Easy Last Minute Advent Calendar for Families

Easy Last Minute Advent Calendar

Advent Calendar Activities for Families

Thanksgiving Felt Board Patterns Direction Following Turkey

Thanksgiving Felt Board

Playful Ways to Learn the Alphabet

Playful Ways to Learn the Alphabet

Gratitude Leaf Garland

Garland Leaf Garland

Fine Motor Sun Catchers

Sequin Fine Motor Activity

Pumpkin Seed and Sequin Sun Catcher

Sight Word Sticky Easel

Sight Word Sticky Easel

Leaves Craft and Fall Leaf Books

Leaves Craft

Fall Leaf Books

Color Sorting with Dyed Pumpkin Seeds

Color Sorting with Dyed Pumpkin Seeds

Turkey Napkin Rings

Turkey Napkin Rings

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