Christmas Fine Motor Activities

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If you work with kids, you might be thinking about Christmas activity ideas that promote the development of fine motor skills. These Christmas Fine Motor Activities are creative ideas that boost dexterity, build fine motor strength, promote precision of grasp, enhance separation of the two sides of the hand, and enhance tripod grasp with a Christmas theme. 

Christmas Fine Motor Activities

These fine motor activities can be used in the classroom as a Christmas craft that doubles also develops the underlying fine motor skills that are needed for so many functional tasks.


Go through the activities below and find your favorite way to play and develop fine motor skills this holiday season!

Use these Christmas fine motor activities to develop skills like hand strength, grasp, endurance, prehension, bilateral coordination, visual motor skills, and more in order to help kids with pencil grasp, handwriting, scissor use, and more.


Christmas theme fine motor activities

When kids make crafts or holiday decorations, they are using and developing many skills. Manipulating tools such as scissors, glue, hole punches, tape, glitter, etc, kids experience various tactile experiences.


Creating with paper or other material requires visual motor skills (eye-hand coordination), fine motor manipulation and strength, dexterity,  bimanual coordination, visual perceptual skills, visual attention, prehension, midline crossing, and visual spatial awareness.



By using tools such as scissors or a hole punch, children can gain proprioceptive input that can be calming within the classroom environment. 



Here are Christmas themed Fine Motor Activities that can be used in the classroom, home, or clinic this holiday season:


Use this Christmas Tree Hole Punch activity to develop strength in the hands and more. This activity uses a hole punch to create lights for each Christmas tree. The bonus with this craft is the learning and math component. Add a colorful twist by adding colored tissue paper to the backs of the trees with glue. 
 
Make a fine motor Christmas card that kids can make too, while working on hand strength, coordination, and eye-hand coordination skills…with a fun Christmas card that kids can make and gift to friends or family!


Use crumbled tissue paper to create this Fine Motor Christmas Tree from Crafts on Sea. Crumbling paper develops the arches and builds strength in the hands. 

Kids will love this Christmas Jingle Bell Sort activity and won’t even realize they are building skills they need for development. This activity can be used all season long to help kids develop in-hand manipulation and separation of the two sides of the hands as kids sort colored jingle bells.



Make these Fine Motor Lacing Christmas Trees from Happy Hooligans to develop skills like visual motor integration, bilateral coordination, tripod grasp, and more. 

Creating this Snowman Fine Motor Craft is a fun way to develop skills like bilateral coordination, pincer grasp and more. This craft is one that builds fine motor strength and precision while creating a fun holiday decoration. 



Boost fine motor skills like grasp, strength, and more when making these Craft Stick Christmas Trees from Easy Peasy and Fun. 

This Fine Motor Christmas Tree Craft addresses many skills needed for development and function. This craft has been very popular here on The OT Toolbox. It’s a way to recycle egg cartons while working on various skills: bilateral coordination, fine motor strength, visual attention, spatial awareness, arch development, wrist extension and stability, and more. 



These Fine Motor Christmas Trees from Stir the Wonder are fun decorations that promote bilateral coordination skills. 

Use recycled bottle caps to make this Bottle Cap Fine Motor Christmas Tree Craft. This fine motor activity can be a holiday decoration that boosts fine motor skills such as precision, in-hand manipulation, tip-to-tip pincer grasp, rotation and dexterity of the fingers needed for in-hand manipulation, and bilateral coordination.



You can find more Christmas themed play and fine motor crafts and activities here on this 25 days of Christmas Play series that we shared a few years back. 


 

Christmas Handwriting Activities

Writing out that Christmas wish list is a difficult task that brings out tears instead of holiday excitement.  I’ve got a solution for your kiddo with handwriting difficulties: a packet of modified paper for all of the Christmas handwriting tasks that come up each year.  Use this handwriting pack to help kids who struggle with handwriting to participate in holiday traditions while even working on and developing their handwriting skills!


Working on handwriting with kids this Christmas season? Grab your copy of the Christmas Modified Handwriting Packet. It’s got three types of adapted paper that kids can use to write letters to Santa, Thank You notes, holiday bucket lists and much more…all while working on handwriting skills in a motivating and fun way! Read more about the adapted Christmas Paper here






Use these Christmas fine motor activities to develop skills like hand strength, grasp, endurance, prehension, bilateral coordination, visual motor skills, and more in order to help kids with pencil grasp, handwriting, scissor use, and more.

 

Christmas Theme Handwriting

For more Christmas fine motor work, try paringin the activities in this post with Christmas handwriting. Use the modified paper to work on areas such as line awareness, spacing, letter size, and legibility with bold lines, highlighted lines, and color-coded lines.

Looking for done-for you therapy activities this holiday season?

This print-and-go Christmas Therapy Kit includes no-prep, fine motor, gross motor, self-regulation, visual perceptual activities…and much more… to help kids develop functional grasp, dexterity, strength, and endurance. Use fun, Christmas-themed, motor activities so you can help children develop the skills they need.

This 100 page no-prep packet includes everything you need to guide fine motor skills in face-to-face AND virtual learning. You’ll find Christmas-themed activities for hand strength, pinch and grip, dexterity, eye-hand coordination, bilateral coordination, endurance, finger isolation, and more. 

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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Christmas Fine Motor activities

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