Looking for a few jellyfish art and craft ideas to create with a beach theme? Today, we’ve got a collection of creative jellyfish crafts, jellyfish handprints, and fun themed activities to build skills. Whether you are heading to the beach or planning a beach themed summer camp, these craft ideas are for you!
Add these ideas to your summer occupational therapy sessions.
Jellyfish crafts can include paper plate jellyfish, paper mache jellyfish, and recycled container jellyfish craft ideas.
Use jellyfish crafts in occupational therapy sessions to work on scissor skills and fine motor skills.
Jellyfish arts and crafts
Jellyfish crafts are maybe one of the cutest crafts to make during the summer. While the real creatures that you dodge while swimming in the ocean are not so nice, they sure are beautiful to watch in an aquarium.
The jellyfish ideas below are just some ways to build skills through crafting. Consider kids crafts such as:
- Jellyfish handprint
- Jellyfish puppet
- Cupcake liner jellyfish
- Paper bowl jellyfish
- Tissue paper tentacles
- Pipe cleaner tentacles
- Egg carton jellyfish
- Cardboard tube jellyfish
- Toilet paper roll sea life
- Coffee filter jellyfish
As you can see there are many ways to make colorful jellyfish crafts using everyday materials! When building these fun crafts, you target several areas of development:
- Scissor skills
- fine motor skills
- Hand strength by cutting and tearing paper strips
- Tactile discrimination and tactile defensiveness by using sticky tape or a glue stick
- Functional skills by managing a hole punch, tape dispenser, or school glue bottle
- Motor planning
- Bilateral coordination
- Crossing midline
We put together a collection of jellyfish crafts with colorful tentacles and gorgeous summer colors. Now the question is, which of these to make first?
JELLYFISH CRAFTS TO MAKE WITH THE KIDS:
- J is for Jellyfish from Crystal and Co. supports fine motor skills by using a template to create jellyfish tentacles and other parts
- Paper bag Jellyfish craft from No Time for Flashcards works on bilateral coordination skills, scissors skills, and more.
- Paper Plate Jellyfish craft from Happy Hooligans is a great hand strengthening activity using a paper plate or paper bowl
- Easter Egg Jellyfish from Teach Beside Me Supports eye hand coordination skills
jellyfish art project Ideas
You can get messy with a few jellyfish art project ideas. This might involve things like using paper mache or using recycled materials in the art projects.
All of these ideas are full of ocean fun and a creative way to develop skills in kids!
Jellyfish Crafts in Occupational Therapy
I love using craft ideas like this because you can target specific skills with the kids you are working with, all while using one project idea. For example, I love to prep all of the materials and then use that craft with my whole caseload.
One student receiving OT services might have a scissor skills goal and another might have executive functioning needs. I have used crafts like this to work on specific skills based on the child’s needs. I might use straight cutting lines to help the student with a scissor skills goal to cut straight along the model line while holding the paper bag or paper plate with their assisting hand.
I might then grade that task lower or higher by using different materials. One student I worked with did very well cutting curved lines on the more resistive surface of a paper plate but struggled to cut curved lines on regular construction paper. That difference in resistance and feedback through the paper made all of the difference in slowing down the scissors to cut accurately.
I then asked them to cut larger curves on the construction paper to make the tendrils of the jellyfish. It worked out great as a graded activity and challenged the student in a “just right” level!
This is just one example of using our jellyfish crafts to work on skills in OT! How will you use these crafts to support your students?
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.
