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

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:

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.
 
One day last week, us Aunts got together for some much-needed sister hang-out time, play time for the cousins, and a little “blog meeting”.
 
We had a snowflake party planned with a bunch of fun little ideas to do with the kids. 
I mean, we found these snowflake cups big-time discounted after Christmas, and had to use them somehow, right??
 
((The babies had fun putting crafting popsicle sticks into one cup, and then one-by-one, putting them back into the other cup…sounds fun to me!))
 
 
We set the table with some cotton batting and silver tinsel. 
 
Blue Legos are optional. 
A little helper thought it fit in with the blue theme pretty well 🙂
 
 

Snowflake Sensory Play

We already had a batch of fake snow made up.  We added into the bag, foam snowflakes, glass gems, and glitter for fun Snowflake themed fine motor and sensory play!
 
Did you see the post where we shared our Mess-Free Fake Snow?
 
 

 

Snowflake Crafts

 
We made snowflakes with pipe cleaners and beads.  This is a great fine motor activity and SO much fun.  My kids are always asking to make necklaces and bracelets with beads and pipe cleaners. So, they really loved this one.
 
Another snowflake craft…
Glue crafting sticks together in a star shape and dip strips of Scotch tape into glitter.  Press the tape down onto the sticks.  Instant glittery and mess-free snowflake!
 
 
We also showed the kids how to fold and cut paper to make snowflakes.  They loved cutting triangles and snips into the paper.  And especially LOVED opening them up to see the pretty snowflake.  They helped us hang the snowflakes and all of the crafts on the window.
 
 
There was a little break from the snowflake theme and party mode to take a Super hero break with dish towels for capes.
FUN STUFF!  And so cute 🙂
 

 

Snowflake Snacks

Snowflake snacks were marshmallows  (they were snowballs of course 🙂
And bugles (Hats!)
 
 
 
 
Have you done any fun snowflake crafts or activities?  We would love to hear about them 🙂
 
 

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.

4 thoughts on “Pipe Cleaner and Bead Snowflakes”

  1. What a fantastic wee snowflake party. Such a great idea, I love reading your blog because I run a parents group called Lets Play and your ideas always inspire and motivate me.xxx

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pipe cleaner and bead snowflakes