Christmas Cookies Activities for Little Ones
Merry Christmas!! It’s that special time when we get to make memories with our little ones. What better way to do that than to learn and play with Christmas cookies! I’m so excited to bake some cookies, get out the decorations, make some sweet treats, and practice our learning skills too. We have a super cute book to read along with these activities too. It’s called Christmas Cookie Day! and it’s the perfect companion for real Christmas cookies and the activities below.
In this resource, there are activities to practice matching, tracing, coloring, fine motor skills, sequencing, counting, number & letter identification, and shapes. There’s even a little cookie booklet to practice some simple, little learner skills too! You’ll probably want to have dry erase markers, play dough, mini-erasers, and other manipulatives for kiddos to play and learn with for these activities.
Scroll down to learn what activities are included in this resource, as well as tips and ideas for you to make each activity work perfectly for little ones of all ages!
MATCHING
The matching activities included in this pack are perfect for practicing matching pictures that are the same and noticing things that are different. The matching activities included are simple ways to practice matching cookies. Little ones can practice describing the shape or color of the cookies to expand or practice vocabulary words. You can help those new words stick by connecting the words you’ve read in a book with the words they’re learning in their activity. Making connections is a great way to help learners anchor their learning and retain that new knowledge.
COUNTING
The activities included for counting serve a few different purposes. Of course, learning one-to-one correspondence and counting objects is an obvious one, but this activity also is great for practicing number recognition and number formation! If your little one is JUST learning to count, just count cookies together. If they’re ready to identify numbers, they can match a picture card to the number on the mat and say the number’s name out loud. And if your little one is ready for even more, they can build their numbers by adding cookies to a cookie tray to represent the number. You could also have learners write their numbers on the laminated sheet or match magnetic numbers to the page too. There are so many different ways to practice math basics with this one activity!
FINE MOTOR SKILLS (PLAYDOUGH, Q-TIP PAINTING, TRACING, DECORATING)
There are a bunch of fun ways to practice fine motor skills included in this resource. Manipulating playdough is really fun way to strengthen hand muscles and develop fine motor skills. It’s the perfect tool to use to blend together learning and playing too! There are 4 playdough mats included, all of different kinds of cookies.
Tracing is a another great way for little ones to start learning how to control their hand movements. These fine motor skills take a lot of muscle control and practice, so using these skills in a variety of ways is a great way to help your little one develop these skills more quickly. There are pages included to practice tracing letters and pages to practice tracing a variety of lines. Your little one can use a dry erase marker to trace, cover the lines’ curves with a small manipulative like mini erasers, or trace them using crayons or markers in the black and white version. And they’re not ready for a crayon, marker, or manipulative, just encourage them to practice tracing using their fingers!
Decorating paper Christmas cookies with stickers, small pieces of straws, mini-erasers, pom poms, or any other small manipulative is a fun way to practice pinching and grasping while having a super fun time! You can give your little one some tongs or tweezers to grab their manipulatives to decorate to add a little challenge to this simple, fun activity.
COMPREHENSION (SEQUENCING)
Being able to know the sequence that something happens in is an essential literacy (and life!) skill for little ones. You can practice these sequencing skills by asking your little ones what happened first and last in their day or their favorite book, what should come NEXT or FIRST when they’re playing with something, or even just practicing putting numbers or letters in the correct order. Though it may take some practice to understand the concept, you’ll be encouraging them to learn that things usually happen in a certain sequence.
There are 2 activities to practice sequencing: showing “How to Eat a Cookie” and “How to Make Cookies” in the correct order. Each of these activities includes 4 steps each. And maybe your little one only knows what happens first or what happens last at first…that’s great! Little steps are still steps. :) Whatever level your kids are ready for, practicing describing a sequence of events is a great way to boost comprehension skills and prepare them for more complex skills later on.
SHAPES
The shapes activities included in this pack are great for practicing matching and naming and coloring shapes. Your little ones can practice describing the shape and/or color of the shape cookies to expand and practice their math vocabulary. You can help those new words stick by connecting the words you’ve read in a book with the words they’re learning in their activity. Can they build the shapes with manipulatives after matching them? Do they want to color or trace the shapes? Want to create them out of playdough or find a shapes video to sing along to? You can extend the learning from this activity in a VARIETY of fun ways!
COLORING (COOKIE BOOKLET)
This cookie booklet is a great way to practice a bunch of skills! There are pages to find cookies, color the cookies by code, matching the small cookies to the bigger cookies, trace the word “cookies”, and cut out small cookie letters to glue into the correct column. These pages only come in black and white, so they’re perfect for practicing coloring, cutting, and tracing all in one activity.
LETTER IDENTIFICATION
The letter activities included in this pack are super hands-on and work super well for practicing matching and naming and coloring capital letters. Your little ones can practice matching the letter cards to the letter mats or squish a ball of playdough under the matching letter. They can also color the letter they found on a simple recording sheet. When they’re done with the activity, you can extend the learning by they creating the shapes with manipulatives or playdough, writing or tracing them on their mat, or singing along to a letters video or song. Immersion is a great way to soak up lots of information about a topic, so toss them into those letters any way you want to!
There’s the Christmas Cookie Activities breakdown, friends! I hope this deeper look into the activities included in this resource is helpful for you and you’re able to use these engaging activities with your little ones all season long. :) Please feel free to leave a comment or send me an email if you have any questions!
Happy learning and merry Christmas, y’all!
