T’is the season for merry making

Some fun ideas for festive fine motor development and seasonal speech and language practice…

The holiday season is wonderful time for crafting, a fantastic opportunity to help children enhance their fine motor skills and work on their speech and language development. Engaging in creative projects can improve hand-eye coordination, dexterity, and patience, all while having festive fun. Here are some simple Christmas craft ideas and activities that you can try together.

FINE MOTOR SKILLS

Bead ornaments: Stringing beads onto a piece of twine to create ornaments is a great way for children to work on their fine motor skills. They’ll need to use their fingers to pick up and thread each bead, improving their hand-eye coordination and precision.

Paper snowflakes: Cutting intricate paper snowflakes may appear delicate, but it’s a wonderful workout for the hands and fingers. Kids can fold and cut paper to create beautiful and symmetrical designs, all while enhancing their scissor control.

Handmade christmas cards: Encourage your kids to make their own Christmas cards. Decorating, cutting, and gluing different elements onto cardstock requires precision and careful hand movements. It’s a fantastic way to improve fine motor skills while also spreading holiday cheer.

Handprint reindeers: Tracing and cutting out handprints to make reindeer antlers and faces is a delightful craft that improves scissor skills and fine motor coordination. What other Christmas shapes can you make with hand or even footprints?

Salt dough ornaments: Mixing, kneading, and manipulating salt dough into various christmas shapes is fun and great for hand strength. Kids can further enhance their dexterity by painting and decorating the ornaments.

Gingerbread house decorating: Constructing and decorating gingerbread houses can be a real test of patience and precision. It involves using small lollies, icing, and a steady hand to create edible works of art. You can cut the time, workload & effort required by hunting down ready-made kits for you to put together.

SPEECH AND LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

Letter to Santa: Writing a letter to Santa is a cherished tradition. This activity encourages children to express their wishes, thoughts, and gratitude in writing. It’s an excellent way to expand their vocabulary and communication skills.

Christmas carol lyrics: Gather the family and sing Christmas carols together. Hand out lyric sheets to the kids, and encourage them to read or sing along. This promotes reading and phonological awareness while enhancing memory.

Holiday recipe cards: Working on recipe cards for holiday treats like sugar cookies or gingerbread houses involves reading and following instructions. This craft not only nurtures cooking skills but also promotes comprehension and vocabulary development.

Christmas Pictionary: Create your own Christmas-themed Pictionary game. Drawing and guessing holiday-related words or phrases can enhance vocabulary and boost communication skills, all while having a blast.

Christmas card messages: When making Christmas cards, discuss the messages with children. Encourage them to write personalised notes, fostering expressive language skills and emotional communication.

Holiday bingo: Design a Christmas- themed bingo game with words or pictures related to the season. Playing bingo encourages listening and speaking as children call out the words or phrases they’ve marked on their cards.

Themed speech crafts: Crafts like creating Christmas-themed speech bubbles or dialogue balloons for characters in holiday stories can help kids practice sentence structure, storytelling, and creativity.

Christmas tree vocabulary: Decorate a Christmas tree with ornaments that have festive words written on them – you can do this on a piece of paper (find a template online!) if you want, rather than on a real tree! Encourage children to identify the words, discuss their meanings, and use them in sentences to promote vocabulary and language skills.