Material: Stickers

Cut Me a Tree

For this activity, you will need to use brown and green construction paper. 

Have the child trace your hand on the green paper, then trace one or two of their own. On the brown paper, ask the child to draw a large rectangle (depending on the child’s developmental skills, you might have him trace or copy the rectangle). Let the child cut the traced hands and rectangle he drew. 

On a large piece of construction paper, have the child glue the large hand on the rectangle, fingers pointing down, then the other hands, fingers pointing down as well (for a blooming tree, have the child glue the traced hands with the fingers pointing up). Using colored foam sheets, let the child draw and cut other shapes, then glue them on the tree as ornaments or flowers. To promote pincer grasp, have the child use the stickers for additional decorations.

Recycled Jug Catcher

For this activity, an adult’s help and supervision are required.

Use a plastic milk container with a handle. Wash the container thoroughly and let dry.

Using a permanent marker, draw a line all the way around the container, about 2 inches up from the bottom. Depending on the child’s developmental skills, ask the child to cut around the line you drew, leaving the handle intact. You may want to help the child at this point and protect from sharp edges. Once you removed the bottom of the container, use the tape to cover the jug’s edges.

Provide the child with different stickers and allow him to decorate the jug to promote pincer grasp. You can also use colored masking tape or paper scraps to decorate your jug.

Take the newspaper and ask the child to ripe large pieces of paper and roll them into balls. Encourage the child to use both hands to ripe and roll the pieces of paper.

Once the jug and the newspaper balls are ready, let the child chose if he wants to first be the pitcher or the catcher. Stand away from each other and have the child either throw the balls into the jug or use the jug to catch the balls you throw. Exchange roles after all the balls are in the jug.

Paper Star Fish

Download and print the Star Fish template.

Ask the child to cut out the star fish image. For children that have difficulties with cutting skills, it is recommended to cut on heavier paper (i.e card-stock or construction paper), and provide with thicker lines/boundaries.

Using the tissue paper, instruct the child to tear pieces of the paper and crumble them into small balls. Encourage the child to move his thumb, pointer, and middle fingers in a circular motion.

Have the child glue the tissue paper balls on the star fish.

If you are using construction paper only, you can cut strips of paper, and let the child tear small pieces to glue on the star fish. If using beans, buttons, or sequins, you can promote pincer grasp by using tongs/tweezers to pick up the items to glue. Stickers can also be used.

Colorful Bookmark

Let the child trace or draw a 3″ x 10″ rectangle (if you want to work on cutting curves, you may draw wiggly lines instead of straight ones). Have the child cut the rectangle out.

Using a single hole hole-puncher, assist the child in punching a hole in the top part of the rectangle. Then, have the child thread a piece of yarn through the hole.

Using the markers and stickers, let the child decorate the bookmark and make it colorful.

Additional ideas for decorating the bookmark:
1. Have the child crumble small pieces of tissue paper
2. Cut/trace a 2.5″ x 9″ rectangle with white printer paper, and glue onto the center within the 3″ x 10″ construction paper.
3. Have the child cut out pictures that he likes from newspaper and magazines
4. Laminate the bookmarks to preserve them!

Winter Snowflakes

Have the child fold the paper in half vertically (independently or with assistance). Ask the child to draw any half-shape to be the base of the snowflake(i.e. half circle, half diamond, etc.). Instruct the child to draw more geometrical shapes along the edges of the paper, which can be cut out. Once the child is done drawing, let the child cut out all the shapes.

Let the child unfold the snowflake and decorate using crayons, markers, glitter, dot paint, stickers, etc.

To grade this activity you can:

1. Have lower/younger kids just cut out the big shape and then color in shapes that you draw for them (or you can draw and they can trace) if cutting the small shapes is too difficult

2. To make this activity easier you can also do half sheets of paper to make smaller snowflakes, less to color/cut/fold.

3. Have older/higher kids try to cut out shapes without drawing them first if they can. They can also fold the snowflake in half a second time (so it is in quarters) and do more cutouts on the snowflake.