Toddler Winter Activities that Build Fine Motor Skills

Inside: These toddler winter activities fit right into your seasonal theme while also developing important finger strength.

Winter is such a fun time for themed activities.

From all the tinsel to the twinkly lights- the glitter sticks around on the furniture until just about Easter! So worth it.

The only downside of winter is that we don’t get to spend as much time outdoors due to how cold it gets here.

It’s very important that we keep lots of indoor activities ready to keep our toddlers busy.

These 15 toddler winter activities are great for strengthening fine motor skills in little hands while maintaining the fun and magical winter theme.

15 Winter Fine Motor Activities

1. Yarn Wrapped Trees – Strengthen small hands by wrapping yarn around triangle tree shapes.
2. Tissue Paper Snowflakes – Use pipettes to drip watercolors onto snowflakes, adding in glitter for extra decoration.
3. Icicle Scissor Skills – Practice cutting skills by drawing icicle points on paper and having preschoolers cut them out. (Theo Toolbox)
4. Build a Snowman – Use tweezers to pick up cotton balls and drop them into the snowman-themed water bottle. (Love Laughter and Learning in Prep)
5. Beading Snowflakes – Create snowflakes with pipe cleaners for toddlers to place beads onto. These can become fun ornaments! (Early Learning Ideas)
6. Q-tip Snowmen – To strengthen hand muscles for toddlers learning to hold a pencil, have them stamp with a q-tip and white paint to fill in snowmen. (Mess for Less)
7. Hole Punch Snowflakes – Toddlers will make beautiful snowflakes by using a hole puncher instead of scissors. (No Time For Flashcards)
8. Paperclip Candy Canes – Practice patterns and precision by placing colorful along this laminated candy cane. (School Time Snippets)
9. Felt Tree Stacking – Cut out felt rings to stack by size onto a popsicle stick, creating a tree. (Powerful Mothering)
10. Q-tip Snowflakes – Use these printable cards to have toddlers match up q-tips and create snowflakes from the patterns. (Playdough to Plato)
11. Winter Tracing Sheets – Practice early writing skills by tracing these winter-themed printables. (Creative Homeschool)
12. Fine Motor Sticker Activity – Toddlers will peel and stick stickers over the ornament outline, or other winter shapes. (Mom Trusted)
13. Clothespin Build-a-Snowman – Use clothespins to put the arms, buttons, and face on the cardboard snowman. (How Wee Learn)
14. Lacing Mittens – Preschoolers will use shoelaces to lace through a hole-punched mitten cutout. (Cachey Mama’s World of Learning)
15. Candy Cane Fine Motor – Run large beads through candy cane-shaped pipe cleaners to create a striped pattern. (Pre-K Pages)

More winter activities:

Putting Together a Gingerbread Theme

15 Ice Activities for Preschoolers

Winter Sensory Bin

Planning your toddler winter theme? We’ve done the work for you!

I’m so excited to be one of the 5 co-authors of an entire series of toddler lesson plans.

These winter lesson plans for toddlers focus on hands-on, multi-sensory, low-prep activities. This theme contains 20 activities designed to help you reach the skills for your toddler throughout the year. We’ve done the activity planning so you don’t have to!

Here’s a look at the skills covered in the lesson plans:

• Counting
• Pre-writing
• Literacy
• Social and Emotional Well Being
• Shapes
• Number Sense
• Music
• Gross-Motor
• Fine-Motor 
• and much more!

What you will find inside:

Skills: a detailed skills list to help you visualize the development in the activity.

Materials: Items to gather before doing the activity

How to: Best read before the activity is prepared to understand how to present it and have toddler engage in the activity.

Extensions: A place to see all the suggestions the teachers have made to take this activity a little further. Or make it simpler.

Modifications: Things that can be added or switched out in the activity.

CLICK HERE for more information!