Christmas is such an exciting time of year, and we’d be fools to not use that to our advantage. Christmas themed activities are a fantastic way to engage kids in learning with something they already love. These Count and Clip Christmas Lights Cards are so easy to make and perfect for math centers. Your kids will practice counting, number recognition, fine motor skills, and more with this easy Christmas math activity.
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More Christmas Fine Motor Activities for Kids
Are you looking for more Christmas themes fine motor activities to do with your kids? These play ideas can be used at home or in the classroom to develop fine motor skills. Either way, your kids will love learning through play with these fun and easy activities.
Christmas Sweater Fine Motor Activity – Stickers are one of my favorite fine motor activities for kids. Pinching, peeling and sticking are all skills that they’re practising. Draw a sweater onto a piece of paper and hand the kids some Christmas themed stickers. They can place the stickers onto the paper to make their own Christmas sweater art.
Christmas Tree Fine Motor Activity – Make your own Christmas tree peg board out of an old cardboard box, some paint and some pegs. Your kids can decorate the Christmas tree again and again (and hopefully leave the real one alone).
Christmas Scissor Skills – this free set of templates consist of several iconic Christmas images. Practice cutting along the lines with this easy, low prep christmas play idea. Grab your copy of the free template today.
For more ideas, visit 30 Christmas Fine Motor Activities for Kids
How to play
Step 1: Count how many Christmas light are on the tree.
2: Find the wooden clothespin that has that same number written on the top.
3. Peg the wooden clothespins onto the bottom of the tree, so that it looks like a trunk.
For example, the number 8 clothespin needs to be pegged onto the tree with 8 lights and the number 4 clothespins needs to be pegged onto the tree with only 4 lights.
Related: Christmas Fine Motor Pack – Gift of Curiosity
Materials Needed
- Green craft paper
- Wooden Clothespins
- Sharpie pens
- Glue
- Scissors
- Hole punch
- White paper
To make these cards more sturdy and last longer, you can also laminate them. That way you can bring them out next year without having to do all of the prep work again.
Related: Pine Cone Christmas Tree Fine Motor Activity – The Imagination Tree
How to Make Count and Clip Christmas Lights Cards
Step 1: Cut the green card into triangles.
You can make them any size you want, but I found that the bigger the triangle the easier it was to put more Christmas lights onto it.
2: Using a black sharpie, draw squiggly lines across the tree.
These lines will be the base for your Christmas lights. You can make them as straight or as curvy as you want. I added a few loops to my Christmas lights because I liked the way they looked.
3. Make your lights.
I did this by punching some circles in white paper using a hole punch. However, if you don’t have a hole punch you can always cut these out using scissors instead.
Glue the white circles onto the lines you previously drew for the Christmas lights. Remember to put a different number of lights onto each tree. I made trees with the numbers 1 – 10. However, you can make more or less, depending on what age group you are teaching.
Color in each of the white circles using a sharpie. You can pick one color, or use different colors to make your lights. You will also find it easier to color in the white circles after you’ve glued them down instead of before. Holding a tiny little circle still while you color it in is difficult.
4. Make your Christmas Tree trunks.
Write the numbers 1 – 10 on ten of the wooden clothespins. Make sure that these numbers match the number of lights on each tree.
Related: Torn Paper Christmas Tree – Mama OT
Voila! All done
In order to complete these Christmas trees your kids will learn how to count, how to recognize the written form of each number, and have the fine motor skills necessary to peg the clothespins and the trees together.
Younger kids will need help with one or all of these skills. However, this is also a fantastic independent learning activity for older children who have the basic concepts, but just need to practice in order to cement these skills.
Are you going to try these Count and Clip Christmas Lights Cards with your kids?
Don’t forget to Pin the idea for later.
Over 100 Pages of Christmas themed play based learning activities and craft templates. Perfect for preschool and kindergarteners.
