Looking for a fun way to bring movement into your circle time? This Jack Be Nimble craft pairs perfectly with nursery rhyme activities that get kids up and moving! Traditional rhymes like this one offer the perfect opportunity to build coordination, balance, and listening skills through gross motor rhymes. Add in a simple hands-on kids crafts, and you’ve got a meaningful activity that supports early learning in a playful way. Whether you’re working with a preschool class or doing OT sessions, this circle time movement idea brings the classic rhyme to life with jumping, crafting, and lots of giggles.
Today’s craft is a Jack Be Nimble craft based on the nursery rhyme, Jack be nimble, Jack be quick. If you are looking for an easy nursery rhyme crafts based on development, this craft supports fine motor skills and scissor skills.
Jack Be Nimble Craft
I love this Jack be Nimble craft because it has so many components that are the building blocks for developing motor skills in kids. You’ll find:
- Cutting simple shapes
- Cutting straight lines and curved lines
- Tearing paper
- Crumbling paper
- Gluing the craft pieces in order (direction following)
This craft is one of those kids crafts that is project based, but there are components that can be created by the child with a process-based format. You can have the child add their own spin on things and offer art and craft materials and just let the process go.
Jack Be Nimble Jack Be Quick Craft for Toddlers and Preschoolers
To make a Jack Be Nimble craft, you’ll need:
- cardstock
in white, another color (we used blue) and a background sheet (we used green)
- glue
- tissue paper
(in red, yellow, and orange)
This craft is a nice one because you can work on cutting simple shapes. Here is a scissor skills crash course that talks about how to modify cutting tasks to make it easier or harder for kids at different skill levels.
Use Squeeze Glue Bottles Instead of Glue Sticks
Here’s an occupational therapy fine motor tip: Use squeeze glue bottles for crafts. This is a strengthening tool that also works on graded precision, wrist stability, bilateral coordination, crossing midline, and visual motor skills!
These are skills that kids need for a wider variety of functional tasks and the squeeze glue bottle builds these skills with instant feedback.
Squeeze too hard and too much glue comes out of the glue bottle. Squeeze too softly and you won’t get any glue. The nice thing is you can modify the amount of pressure needed by opening or closing the cap slightly.
Wrist stability with fine motor tasks like using scissors and writing is huge. That’s why I love using the glue bottle task as a way to work on this. If the wrists are bent, or flexed when squeezing the glue bottle, the child won’t have stability and strength. It’s easy to point out this concept to them while they are using the glue bottle because it’s right there in front of them with both hands together on the glue bottle.
This is a great way to make the nursery rhyme craft even more functional and effective!
To make the Jack be Nimble Jack be Quick craft:
- Start by cutting the simple shapes you’ll need to make the candlestick craft. Older kids can work on scissor skills to cut these simple shapes.
- Cutting from card stock is a great way to work on scissor accuracy because the resistance is greater than regular printer paper. This allows children to slow their snipping speed and better accuracy when cutting along lines.
- Cut a semi-circle from colored paper and a rectangle from white paper.
- Tear a square of each color of tissue paper.
5. Glue the semi-circle onto the paper. This is a great opportunity to talk about shapes with your toddler or preschooler.
6. Glue the rectangle on top of the semicircle.
7. Draw a flame shape with the glue.
8. Have your child tear small pieces of the tissue paper.
Tearing paper and crumbling tissue paper is a great way to work on fine motor hand strength, opening of the web space (area between the thumb and index finger), and defining of the arches of the hand.
All of these areas are important for pencil grasp and endurance in handwriting and coloring.
Tearing tissue paper is such a great fine motor strengthening activity and one of my favorites!
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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