Looking for a snowman craft to help kids develop fine motor skills during the winter months? These snowman activities and snowman crafts are perfect for using in occupational therapy interventions or to build skills! Here you will find snowman activities for fine motor, gross motor, sensory tolerance, pencil grasp, handwriting, math, scissor skills, sensory experiences, and other learning/school tasks. Use the snowman crafts and sensory activities to make winter fun a skill-building moment! For wintery fun, browse the ideas below.
Add this snowman theme to your weekly therapy theme list for themed therapy activities that are done for you.
Snowman Crafts
Let’s start with snowman crafts that build fine motor skills. We know that kids crafts have a powerful benefit when it comes to developing fine motor precision, hand strength, functional use of craft tools like glue bottles, scissors, crafting materials. When kids use these craft items to create, they are using the occupation of crafting to develop skills for that specific task, but also to carryover to other functional tasks. When it comes to occupational therapy, crafts are a means and a technique to functional skill development!
These snowman crafts are just one theme in the selection of winter craft ideas that we have on the website.
Check out the selection of snowman themed crafts below. From the paper snowman, to toilet paper snowman crafts, these creative snowman craft ideas will have you covered on fun ways to help kids build motor skills and executive functioning skills this winter.
These snowman crafts cover a variety of materials and skills. Choose the ones that work for your needs, and available materials. Kids can improve areas including: pinch, grasp, precision, cutting, glue use, bilateral coordination, eye-hand coordination, and more.
Snowman Glitter Craft
There is just something about kids and glitter! But did you know the fine motor benefits of a glitter snowman craft? Use stamp art to make a snowman but with a sparkly paint when you mix glitter into paint to create this textured snowman. Work on precision, fine motor skills, texture tolerance, and address eye-hand coordination with this stamp glitter snowman craft.
Kids will also love to paint real snow. Here’s how to paint snow using spray bottles to double down on the fine motor skills.
This glittery snowman is a fun craft idea that works on boosting important fine motor skills that are needed for pencil grasp, fastener manipulation, and the opening and closing of containers and food products! All of these are essential skills needed for a child to become more independent in their daily task performance.
Making a textured snowman is fun with the Disguise a Snowman activity in the Snowman Therapy Kit. Add sequins, glitter, and puffy paint, or other fine motor items like beads, string, and more to disguise a snowman!
Paper snowman Craft-
There are many ways to make a paper snowman, and when kids cut and paste, they are building fine motor skills with basic, everyday craft materials. Plus, there are tons of fun and creative ways to make a paper snowman, too, so this is a wintery craft idea that can be extended while working on motor skill development. Try some of these paper snowman craft ideas:
- Use junk mail to make a paper snowman collage.
- Cut and paste a Snowman countdown craft to make a paper chain snowman.
- Make a snowman suncatcher and build fine motor skills.
- Create a sensory tolerance activity with this shredded paper snowman.
- Work on letter identification with this snowman letter craft.
- Cut round circles and glue them together to build a snowman from paper.
- Build a paper snowman using the templates in the Snowman Therapy Kit. The materials are all there for you. Kids can color the objects and cut them out while working on scissor skills. The paper snowman templates are large, so this is a great gross motor task for building or attaching to a bulletin board or magnetic wall to work on core strength and working on a vertical, too.
Egg carton snowman-
Egg cartons are a great therapy tool, but when you make an egg carton snowman, you get many fine motor benefits too. Work on in-hand manipulation and eye-hand coordination skills with this cute egg carton snowman!
For another way to use egg cartons to make a snow friend, try this Egg Carton Snowman. It’s a another fun craft idea that children will love and it works on important fine motor hand skills to include a tripod grasp, intrinsic hand strength, arch development, and an open web space. How? By implementing the use of scissors, bottle glue, marker, and skewers. Easy to create, but so effective in skill development and children will have so much fun doing it!
Toilet paper Snowman Craft-
Grab a toilet paper tube or a paper towel roll and start painting it white. Then, cut the paper tube into sections. These make great tacking tubes to work on fine motor skills and bilateral coordination. Add a few snowman details like a scarf, black dots for buttons, and coal. Draw on a carrot and you’ve got a fine motor toilet paper snowman!
Stacking toilet paper snowmen is really cute way to work on fine motor skills while building snowman towers! That’s right, towers of toilet paper snowmen in which a child uses tongs (or hands) to pick up and sort snowmen into towers by stacking them on top of each other. Sort, build the tallest tower, or simply just stack! This activity easily works on fine motor control, strengthening and endurance, and grading of movement.
Sticker Snowman Craft-
We used paper reinforcement stickers to create a snowman craft with big fine motor benefits. This is a great way to work on precision and dexterity with this fine motor snowman craft. Kids can peel off the small paper reinforcements and place then precisely on paper using neat pincer grasp, eye-hand coordination, and separation of the sides of the hand in order to make the sticker snowman. Plus, kids love using paper reinforcement stickers!
Cotton Ball Snowman Craft
Using cotton balls or craft pom poms to make a snowman is a fun way to build fine motor skills, too. We used craft pom poms to make this clothespin snowman but cotton balls would work, too.
For more cotton ball snowmen, try these ideas:
- Stamp and paint to make this snowman art activity using materials in your home.
- Dab a cotton ball into glue (pincer grasp) and then press it onto paper or a textured background (arch development and hand strength) to build a 3D snowman.
Paper Plate Snowman Craft-
Emotion Snowmen Paper Plates is an easy to create paper plate activity that works on facial emotion identification and awareness with the theme of snowmen. Kids can make their own emotional faces or they can be premade to work on social emotional skills. Make duplicate plates and create a matching game as a way to work on visual memory too!
For another paper plate snowman idea use the snowball templates in the Snowman Therapy Kit. Kids can cut out the large snowball circles and glue them to paper plates. Then, build a snowman using the paper plates. Kids can then decorate their snowman and work on fine motor skills.
Snowman Activities
Below, you’ll find more snowman fun. I’ve broken these snowman activities and therapy ideas into areas designed to help kids develop specific skills. You’ll find snowman activities for fine motor development, gross motor skills, and motor planning. You’ll love the craft ideas that challenge visual perceptual skills and sensory tolerance. Each activity can also build on several skill areas.
Deep Breathing Snowman is a fun mindfulness, deep breathing printable to use as a sensory coping strategy with kids throughout the winter season. Simply print and teach children to follow the visual prompts on the snowman to trace and pause at each white dot and hold their breath to achieve a calming effect.
Snowman Brain Breaks- Kids love the self-regulation strategies using whole body movements with a snowman theme. These exercises get kids moving, and are a great way to add mindful movement during the winter months when it can be a challenge to get outdoors. You can find these snowman brain breaks in the Snowman Therapy Kit.
Snowman Executive Functioning Activity (Make a Snowman Treat)- Cooking in the kitchen is a powerful way to develop fine motor skills and executive functioning skills. Use cucumbers and vegetables to make this snowman snack. Click here for the snowman snack directions.
Pin the Nose on a Snowman- This gross motor snowman activity is a great way to develop specific gross motor skills like hopping, skipping, squatting, and balance. The coordination tasks are on the snowman noses and when kids pin the nose on the snowman, they get a gross motor movement break, too. You’ll find this winter activity in the Snowman Therapy Kit.
Snowman Self-Regulation Activity– This deep breathing activity can be a coping tool or a sensory strategy to help with self-regulation skills. Included is a free printable deep breathing worksheet. Click here for a snowman deep breathing activity.
Snowman Puzzles- There are so many reasons why I love these snowman puzzles. Kids can trace the snowman, color in the picture, and then cut out the paper puzzles. Plus, they can build the puzzle and work on visual perceptual skills, too. In the Snowman Therapy Kit, you’ll find simple and complex snowman puzzles and a variety of puzzle tasks for this winter theme.
Snowman Sensory Activity– Use this baking soda dough recipe to make a sensory and fine motor material that kids can use to build skills. The baking soda dough provides a resistant material for strengthening hands. Click here to for the snowman baking soda dough directions.
Snowman Gross Motor (slide deck)– Incorporate bilateral coordination, motor planning, crossing midline, and other gross motor skill areas with this snowman activity. Kids can follow along to the slide images. This makes a great brain break activity, too. This is a free Google slide deck. Click here for the snowman bilateral coordination activities.
Snowman Fine Motor Activity– This counting/adding/subtracting activity builds eye-hand coordination, and fine motor skills. Make snowmen from recycled egg cartons. This is a great activity for breaking down numbers. Click here for this snowman math activity.
Another great fine motor snowman activity is the bead copying cards in the Snowman Therapy Kit. Kids can cut out the bead cards and then copy the patterns to make a string of beads while developing fine motor skills, eye-hand coordination, and visual motor skills.
Snowman Eye-Hand Coordination Activity- We’ve made a ton of virtual therapy Slide decks for occupational therapy services, and this snowman themed task is one more. Use this build a snowman activity in virtual lessons or teletherapy to work on eye-hand coordination, visual scanning, handwriting, or typing.
Graph a Snowman- For kids working on executive functioning skills like metacognition, organization, task completion, prioritization, and planning, a “graph a snowman” task is a great activity. You’ll find this printable resource in our Snowman Therapy Kit.
More Snowman Crafts and Activities for Therapy
Kids are loving our latest therapy kit! The Snowman Therapy Kit covers all aspects of therapy skill areas: gross motor, fine motor, self-regulation, visual perception, executive function, handwriting, scissor skills, and more! Read all about the Snowman Therapy Kit here.
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.