If you've been looking for a quick Christmas activity for toddlers and preschoolers, then you're going to love this simple fine motor threading activity using jingle bells.
It's a fun musical spin on a classic activity. But it's also something that can be set up in mere seconds. Especially if you already have jingle bells on hand like I do. If not, you can usually find them at the dollar store and then reuse them for a variety of Christmas activities afterwards.
I set up this Christmas threading activity with jingle bells for my youngest and he absolutely loved it! The noise he got to make was probably his favorite part.
Want to Keep Kids Busy this Christmas? Try this Simple Threading Activity
A traditional threading activity for kids might involve sliding ribbon or string into some lacing cards. Or maybe putting beads onto pipe cleaners or string. But using jingle bells instead of beads, for instance, puts a fun twist on a classic fine motor activity.
See most toddler threading activities usually just involve a tactile and a fine motor component. You slide something into place. Then you repeat over and over. That's it.
However, this particular activity includes an additional auditory or music component by adding jingle bells. The jingle bells ring and jingle as they slide down the stick. Then there's a little metal clink as the bells collide. It's a fun little addition! One that toddlers and preschoolers really love (at least mine did!).
Fun Variations on this Christmas Threading Activity Using Jingle Bells
As you'll learn when you click over to the CBC Parents website for full details, you'll discover that we threaded jingle bells onto a wooden skewer.
However, there are some other variations to this Christmas fine motor activity that you could try that I didn't include with my original post. So if you want to switch it up a bit, you can. You could:
- Use colored jingle bells and alternate the order in which you thread them onto the stick to work on patterning as well as fine motor skills such as threading
- Try different sizes of jingle bells and encourage your child to listen to how the different sizes sound as they thread
- Thread the jingle bells onto a ribbon instead to create a jingle bell bracelet to wear after the activity is done
- Race against a friend or family and turn this activity into a Christmas Minute to Win it game. Simply set up more than one station for people to compete against each other and see who can thread their jingle bells the fastest!
- Count the jingle bells as you thread them as a way to work on math skills. Or try using multiple skewers to make an addition machine.
- Use colored skewers (you could color them with permanent marker) and colored jingle bells and work on color recognition and matching. Simply have your child slide the red jingle bells onto the red stick, gold bells onto a gold stick, and so on.
Ready to try this jingle bell threading activity (or one of the above variations) with your kids this Christmas? Then head on over to CBC Parents for the full details.
{Read Jingle Bell Christmas Threading Activity on CBC Parents.}
