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Day: November 30, 2016

Bear Ornament

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Bear ornament


Making holiday ornaments like this bear ornament with kids is such a fun way to develop fine motor skills, and then see the work hanging on the Christmas tree. Kids will love this teddy bear ornament but occupational therapists will love it even more for the developmental aspects! Add this bear ornament craft to your occupational therapy Christmas crafts.

Bear Ornament

Check out these Christmas Fine Motor Activities for more creative ways to work on fine motor skills and address development of skills this Christmas season. 

Today, I have a fun bear craft to share with you. This bear ornament is such a fun way to get kids creating and crafting during the Christmas season. We used this as a bear Christmas ornament, and a children’s book extension activity for the Bear Books by Karma Wilson.  

We made the bear craft based on Bear Stays Up for Christmas.  It’s true that in our house, we do love to come up with crafts and activities based on children’s books and this Christmas book themed Christmas ornament craft was no exception.

Bear ornament that kids can make for a book related Christmas ornament.

How to make a Bear ornament

This post contains affiliate links.

When we came up with this bear craft, we knew we wanted to create a cute bear that matched the bear in Karma Wilson’s Bear Stays Up for Christmas.  The bear books are such a fun series to read and we loved to see Bear’s friends help him stay up to celebrate Christmas.

Bear Stays Up for Christmas is the perfect book to add to your reading list this Christmas season.  It shows us how bear discovers the best gift of all is giving.  How fun would it be to read this book, make the cute bear craft Christmas ornament, and then give it to a friend?

Such a cute bear ornament for Christmas.

You’ll need just a few materials to make this bear craft:

This is such an easy bear craft.  It would be perfect for preschool aged kids or grade school children. To start, you’ll need to cut a bear face shape from the cardboard.

Bear craft that kids will love to make while working on fine motor skills.

Bear Craft

Bear crafts can be made this time of year, or all year long to work on skills like fine motor work, eye-hand coordination, bilateral coordination, and more.

Then, use the brown twine to wrap all around the cardboard face shape. Tape the twine to the back of the bear to keep it in place.

Help kids work on fine motor skills with a bear craft that is perfect for a Christmas ornament.

Fine motor tip: This activity is a great way to address bilateral coordination skills. Wrapping the twine around the cardboard shape allows kids to coordinate both hands together with a working hand and a non-dominant, assisting hand.  This type of activity requires a child to work at midline while looking down toward their hands.  It is a good activity for kids to seem to switch hands when writing or require prompts to hold the paper when writing and other tasks that utilize an assisting hand and precision work with the dominant hand.

Read here for more information on creative ways to address bilateral coordination. 

Continue to wrap the twine around the cardboard until most of the cardboard is not showing, including around the bear’s ears.


Add a small piece of tape to the back of the bear craft to hold the end of the twine down.


Next, stick the peel and stick googly eyes on the bear’s face.

Kids love to make crafts like this bear craft based on a popular childrens book.

Use a dab of glue or a glue dot to stick the crafting pom pom onto the bear craft.


Finally, use a small piece of twine on the back of the bear craft to create a loop in order to hang the bear craft Christmas ornament onto the Christmas tree.




While this bear craft was based on a popular children’s Christmas book, it would be a great accompaniment for any bear themed preschool book or children’s book.

Kids can make this bear craft based on the book, Bear stays up for Winter, or any bear book for kids.

Make this bear craft Christmas ornament based on Bear Stays Up for Christmas childrens book.

Need more ornament crafts? 



Nativity Tree Decorations 

Spice Jar Lid Star Ornaments 

Dog Ornament 

Pine Tree Ornament

Looking for more kid-created Christmas ornaments?  Here are some of our favorites:

Bottle Caps Holly Ornament

Spaghetti Wreath Ornament

ee cummings Little Tree Christmas Ornament

Olive the Other Reindeer Ornament

Cutest ever bear craft Christmas ornament for kids.
Every Christmas tree needs this kid-made Christmas tree bear craft ornament!


 

 

 

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.

Handwriting Resources

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Handwriting can be a tough struggle to overcome.  You might work with a child on line awareness or spatial recognition but the child still neglects these areas. 

 
You might see letters that are formed poorly so that legibility is greatly impacted.
 
You might help a child on their written work and they seem to do well when one-on-one, but they simply can not carry the skills over into the classroom setting.
 
You might see struggles with letter and number reversals no matter how much you practice letter formation and perceptual skills.
 
All of these difficulties are challenges that YOU have mentioned to me.
 
Chances are, there are many, MANY more others who are facing the very same handwriting challenges with their child, student, or therapy client.
 
All of these concerns were voiced to me as a response to my Handwriting Help email series.  Did you get the free printables and 6 days of themed handwriting help?  Sign up here.
 
The thing is, every child struggles in different ways.  There are differences in attention, focus, sensory needs, fine motor skills, pencil grasp, visual processing, cognition, and many more factors. What works for one child may not work for another.
 
However, there are common techniques that can help children who face specific handwriting challenges.
 
To help work on these areas, I wanted to share with you some handwriting resources that can help.  These are activities and ideas that might be just the thing that clicks for your child.
 
These are workbooks, handwriting practice sheets, and creative strategies that can help kids who struggle with handwriting.  
Handwriting resources for parents, teachers, therapists, and professionals who work with children with handwriting legibility challenges and sloppy writing.
 

Handwriting Resources for Sloppy Handwriting

 
Affiliate links are included in this post. 
 
handwriting strategies resources
When Your Child Hates Handwriting provides handwriting instruction through 50+ fun and easy activities that can be incorporated into handwriting practice .  Appropriate for use with children from ages 3 to 12, this book offers a new approach to teaching the struggling child how to write.
Buy When Your Child Hates Handwriting 
 
Rewiring the Brain Handbook is a printable handwriting workbook that is designed for parents, teachers, therapists, and professionals as a guide for providing cognitive development, fine motor skills, and emotional grounding.  The exercises in the book are intended to support emotional stability, attention, reading, fine motor skills, eye-hand coordination, and visual perception. The workbook contains 42 pages of exercises and activities with lines, shapes, letters, mazes, and fine motor games to enhance learning development.  
Buy Rewiring the Brain Handbook
This Handwriting Bundle printable packet is designed to help with prewriting skills, letter formation and handwriting practice.  When you purchase all the titles together you receive a 30% discount.  
This handwriting bundle includes the titles below (click on each title for more information):
  1. Lines, Lines and More Lines ($3.99)
  2. Fading Lines and Shapes ($3.99)
  3. Fading Alphabet ($4.50)
  4. Handwriting Stations ($6.99)
  5. Animal Action Alphabet ($4.99)
  6. Visual Perceptual and Handwriting Practice Pages ($4.99)
  7. Handwriting Templates with Alphabet Guides ($4.99)
Regularly, these titles would be priced at $34.44 but when you purchase all 7 together you get a 30% discount sale price of $24.10!  This discount code was created specifically based on the interests of my readers (that’s you!)
 
 
This Visual Perception, Tangrams, & Handwriting Workbook activity workbook has information on all of the visual perceptual areas necessary for written work: 
  • Visual Spatial Relations
  • Visual Discrimination
  • Figure Ground
  • Form Constancy
  • Visual Memory
  • Eye-Hand Coordination
  • Sequential Memory
  • Visual Closure
The printable workbook shares creative puzzles, drawing activities, and building challenges that will work on all of the skills needed for improving line awareness, letter formation, and neatness in written work.  Read more about this Visual Perception workbook and ways to use the activities in a playful way.
Buy Visual Perception, Tangrams, & Handwriting Workbook
 
The Handwriting Book is a digital book written by 10 pediatric Occupational Therapists and Physical Therapists and addresses underlying components related to handwriting.  This book is FULL of creative ways to work on handwriting. 

 

MORE handwriting resources you will love:

 
Be sure to join the Sweet Ideas for Handwriting Help Facebook Group for daily handwriting tips, strategies, and practice techniques in an engaging community of parents, teachers, and therapists.
Handwriting resources for parents, teachers, therapists, and professionals who work with children with handwriting legibility challenges and sloppy writing.

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