Pipe Cleaner and Bead Snowflakes

Having a snowflake party? Or maybe just doing a few snowflake activities in your therapy sessions or classroom and want to hit on fine motor skills with a winter theme? You’re in luck! We’ve got a fun pipe cleaner and bead snowflake activity along with a few snowflake crafts, pipe cleaner snowflakes, craft stick snowflakes, and more!

pipe cleaner and bead snowflakes

We’ll start off the snowflake activities with our favorite…pipe cleaner and bead snowflakes. This is one of the best fine motor activities during the winter months for several reasons: it uses items you likely have on hand, and you can target a variety of skills and needs with a single craft.

This fine motor winter activity is a great addition to a winter classroom door decoration, too. Pair it with our My Snow Globe worksheet for a winter handwriting activity.

To thread beads onto a pipe cleaner, you’ll need several underlying skills, making this a great occupational therapy craft during the winter months.

Some of those skills include:

• Pincer grasp– grasping the pony bead with the tips of the fingers
• Open thumb web space– holding the bead with the tips of the finger in order to press it onto the pipe cleaner
• Bilateral coordination– coordinating the motor skills between the bead hand and the pipe cleaner hand. Here are more Winter Bilateral Coordination Activities to target this skill.
• Eye-hand coordination– You can coordinate visual motor skills by asking the child to create symmetrical designs or copy patterns.

Making pipe cleaner and bead snowflakes can also be a great Indoor Recess Ideas for the winter months, too.

Materials:

To make the pipe cleaner and bead snowflakes, simply place your materials on a table.

1. Blue or white pipe cleaners
2. Beads in wintery colors: blues, greys, greens, and white

Then, start making the pipe cleaner bead snowflakes:

1. Twist pipe cleaners together to create an 8 sided snowflake.
2. Add beads to each “stem” of the snowflake.
3. When the beads have been added, bend the end of the pipe cleaner so the beads don’t fall off.

Snowflake Sensory Play

Snowflake Crafts

Snowflake Snacks

If you are hanging these pipe cleaner bead snowflakes on a window, you can use a suction cup hanger.

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.

What if you had themed, NO-PREP activities designed to collect data and can help kids build essential fine motor skills?

Take back your time and start the year off with a bang with these done-for-you fine motor plans to help kids form stronger hands with our Winter Fine Motor Kit. This print-and-go winter fine motor kit includes no-prep fine motor activities to help kids develop functional grasp, dexterity, strength, and endurance. Use fun, winter-themed, fine motor activities so you can help children develop strong fine motor skills in a digital world. 

The Winter Fine Motor Kit includes reproducible activity pages include: pencil control strips, scissor skills strips, simple and complex cutting shapes, lacing cards, toothpick precision art, crumble hand strengthening crafts, memory cards, coloring activities, and so much more.