Christmas

Christmas Ornaments Sensory Bottle

My calendar is filling up with Christmas concerts and holiday parties and plans. This can only mean that the holidays are fast approaching. With that, I’m able to pull out the Christmas sensory activities. I created this very simple Christmas Ornaments Sensory Bottle using the same items I used for our Ornaments Sensory Bag.

Christmas Ornaments Sensory Bottle

Materials needed:

water bottle (I used a Voss bottle)
liquid hand soap
mini Christmas ornaments
optional: hot glue

To put together this holiday sensory bottle, empty the water out of the water bottle. Fill it most of the way to the top with clear liquid hand soap. Add some small ornaments. If they get stuck near the top of the bottle, you can use a bamboo skewer to push them further into the bottle. Place the lid back on the bottle.

You can secure the lid with hot glue if you’d like. This is especially important if younger children will be using the sensory bottle, but of course, adult supervision is always recommended.

I used the same items to make a Christmas Ornaments Sensory Bag to give my kids another sensory activity option.

Looking for other sensory activities? Join me for a free 5 part email series Sensory Solutions and Activities and get your Sensory System Behaviours Easy Reference Cards.

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The Best Christmas Playdough Recipes

By Sharla Kostelyk Leave a Comment

Playdough is an easy sensory play activity to set up. There are so many ways to create and explore with it. The best Christmas playdough recipes here will give you options to make holiday scented, creativity rich experiences.

Christmas Playdough Recipes:

This Scented Gingerbread Playdough is our personal favourite. It smells so much like actual gingerbread dough and rolling and cutting the dough is a great sensory activity.

We really enjoyed this Snow Playdough. I set out other items with it to encourage exploration and the kids made snowmen, snowflakes and white trees with it and especially enjoyed the glittery dough.

Our Peppermint Essential Oil Christmas Playdough was one of our favourite playdough activities ever. I set out some items to encourage exploration and the kids created for hours.

Our gluten free Candy Cane Playdough is perfect for families who need to avoid gluten due to allergies or sensitivities.

This “Easiest Recipe” Christmas Playdough from Teaching Mama looks like one of those no fail ones, which are always good to try.

If you’re looking for a recipe that can do double duty, this Candy Cane Play Dough Soap and Bubble Bath from STEAM Powered Family may be just what you’re looking for.

I like how this Chocolate Reindeer Playdough from Fantastic Fun and Learning combines natural items from the outdoors with the playdough to create all kinds of opportunity for imaginative play.

This Christmas Cranberry Playdough from Natural Beach Living is a no cook recipe.

The Hot Chocolate Playdough from Fireflies + Mud Pies is adorable, especially the mini marshmallows.

I bet this Chocolate & Cherry Reindeer Playdough from Emma Owl smells fabulous.

Other Christmas Playdough Recipes:

Snow Dough from Emma Owl

DIY Gingerbread Man Playdough from iGoBOGO

No Cook Natural Peppermint Playdough from Natural Beach Living

Candy Cane Playdough at Fireflies + Mud Pies

Winter Wonderland Playdough from Messy Little Monster

Baby Cereal Snow Dough by Creative World of Varya

Christmas Cloud Dough:

This Christmas Cloud Dough from Lalymom is visually interesting as well as giving scent and tactile sensory feedback.

Little Bins for Little Hands created this Christmas Cloud Dough Cookie Sensory Play recipe.

Creative World of Varya made a Twilight Sparkle Cloud Dough that would go well with the holiday season.

Looking for other sensory play ideas? Join me for a free 5 part email series Sensory Solutions and Activities and get your Sensory System Behaviours Easy Reference Cards.

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Peppermint Essential Oil Christmas Playdough

By Sharla Kostelyk Leave a Comment

The smell of Christmas is peppermint for many and this peppermint essential oil Christmas playdough incorporates that into an activity. There are a lot of possibilities for play with this activity. Kids can use their imaginations to come up with new ways to play and enjoy.

Peppermint Essential Oil Christmas Playdough Recipe:

1 cup flour
1/2 cup salt
2 Tbsp. cream of tartar
1 Tbsp. oil
8-12 drops of green food colouring
3-5 drops of peppermint essential oil
1 cup boiling water
optional: green or silver glitter

I find that the easiest way to make playdough is to use the KitchenAid mixer. Add the flour, salt, cream of tartar to the KitchenAid mixer. With the dough beater (the flat one), begin mixing on low and add the oil, food colouring, and peppermint essential oil. As it mixes, pour in the boiling water and continue to mix on low until it resembles playdough texture.

Remove the dough from the mixer and knead it for 30 seconds to a minute. If you want to add glitter, add it in at this point and mix it through by kneading.

I wanted this playdough activity to encourage open-ended play so I set out quite an assortment of items with the playdough. When I create an invitation to create with playdough, I like to use a party platter serving tray. It makes everything accessible and look appealing so that the kids can just dive right in. This time, what I included in the invitation to create with peppermint playdough was:

jingle bells
beads
coloured pushpins
mini Christmas ornaments
cookie cutters (I put out a Christmas tree, a stocking, a star, a cross, and one that is shaped like a candy cane one way or a J the other so it could also be a J for Jesus)
peppermint essential oil playdough

Big caveat here: I was using this with older kids, so I felt comfortable setting out the pushpins for them to use and they were the favourite item, BUT they are sharp and wouldn’t be appropriate to use with younger children. And of course, as with all sensory activities, adult supervision is recommended.

My kids explored and created with the peppermint playdough for hours. One pounded the dough with their palms while another preferred to roll it out with a rolling pin. They shaped it using their hands or the cookie cutters. They pressed beads and mini ornaments and pushpins (tacks) and jingle bells into the shapes. They discovered that once playdough is inside jingle bells, they no longer jingle!

Sensory Play Specifics:

There is so much sensory input with this one activity. The smell of the peppermint essential oil is an alerting scent. This can help with kids who may be low energy or sluggish. Due to the scent, the olfactory sensory system is engaged. The activity also engages the visual and tactile senses while children explore colour and texture through touch and sight and even the proprioception sensory system as they knead or push and pull the dough.

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Looking for other sensory play ideas? Join me for a free 5 part email series Sensory Solutions and Activities and get your Sensory System Behaviours Easy Reference Cards.

Christmas Ornaments Sensory Bag

By Sharla Kostelyk Leave a Comment

That season is fast approaching and with it, all the preparations and excitement. I find that my kids need extra sensory input around this time of year. This Christmas ornaments sensory bag is such an easy one to put together and fits with the holiday theme.

This sensory bag couldn’t be more simple. You only need 3 things to create this including the plastic bag! The nice thing about it being so simple is that you can so easily use ornaments you already have at home. I picked the ones I used up at the dollar store.

Christmas Ornaments Sensory Bag

Materials needed:

resealable plastic bag
clear hand sanitizer
small, multi-coloured Christmas ornaments
optional: duct tape

To make the sensory bag, fill the resealable plastic bag about half full with the hand sanitizer. Add in the ornaments. Remove the excess air from the bag and seal.

If you are going to be giving this bag to younger children or if you want to prevent potential leaks, you can fold duct tape over all the edges. Using holiday duct tape can make it look better and add to the fun. There are lots of different types.

Of course, as with all sensory activities, adult supervision is recommended, especially as the small ornaments could be a choking hazard.

Looking for more easy sensory activities? Join me for a free 5 part email series Sensory Solutions and Activities and get your Sensory System Behaviours Easy Reference Cards.

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Christmas Ice Box Cookies

By Sharla Kostelyk 1 Comment

These Christmas Ice Box Cookies bring both the colours and flavour of the holiday season. I also like that the dough can be made days ahead or even frozen. This is such a nice feature given how busy this time of year gets.

These Christmas ice box cookies are one of my holiday favourites. With the candied cherries and pistachios, they look like bits of Christmas on a plate! Making the dough ahead of time and slicing before baking makes them all very uniform in size which makes them look even prettier.

Christmas Ice Box Cookies Recipe:

1 cup margarine
1 1/2 cups packed brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
3 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
3/4 cup candied cherries, quartered
1/2 cup currants
1/4 – 1/2 cup finely chopped pistachios or other nuts (I use pistachios because of the colour)

In a large bowl, cream together margarine and sugar. Beat in the eggs one at a time and add the vanilla.

Stir the flour, baking soda and salt together and mix in. Add the cherries, currants and nuts. Mix and shape into round logs approximately 2 inches in diameter. Wrap the logs and chill overnight or for a few days. The dough can also be frozen.

When you are ready to bake them, slice the dough thinly. Arrange on an ungreased baking sheet and bake them at 375° for 6-7 minutes (until lightly browned). Cool.

Cookies make a perfect homemade holiday gift. According to a recent survey conducted by Becel, 3 out of 4 Canadians agree that DIY gifts are more thoughtful than store-bought gifts.

One of my favourite things about giving baked goods for Christmas is that the making of them is something that my kids can participate in. Granola Girl helped me with every step of making these Christmas ice box cookies from helping me cut the nuts to slicing the dough. I know that she will be beaming when she hands them to our friends and neighbours!

Inexpensive ideas for gifting cookies:

Place them in a mason jar and wrap ribbon around the lid. Attach a gift tag to the ribbon.
Wrap an empty Pringles can with decorative paper and fill with cookies before topping with a bow.
Buy a beautiful plate from a second hand store and deliver the cookies on the plate.
Place them in a gift bag decorated by your kids.
Create a cute paper bag and toothpick pouch.
Fill plastic cups and wrap with cellophane and tie with ribbon

What is your favourite holiday recipe to gift to others?

I Spy Christmas Sensory Bag

By Sharla Kostelyk Leave a Comment

I love to make crafts and activities with the kids based on books. It’s a fun way to help reinforce what they saw in the book. The inspiration for this I Spy Christmas sensory bag is the book I Spy Christmas. Last year, we made a Christmas Counting I Spy Sensory Bottle and the kids really enjoyed discovering what they could see inside it.

This year, after reading I Spy Christmas and finding the hidden things within its pictures, I made this simple I Spy Christmas Sensory Bag.

To make this Christmas sensory bag, all you will need is:

medium sized resealable bag
coconut flakes
bag of small Christmas shaped buttons or small Christmas themed trinkets

We actually found a bag of flaked coconut that was very expired when one of my sons was helping me clean out the pantry so it was perfect to use in this sensory activity rather than wasting it.

Place the coconut and Christmas shapes inside the resealable bag and close. For younger children, you can also add packing tape folded over the top so that they can’t open it.

Ours included shapes like a Christmas tree, gingerbread men, stockings, and most importantly, baby Jesus. After all, it is Him that we celebrate at Christmas and Him that I most want my kids to focus on even in a simple sensory bag. Jesus is the treasure waiting to be discovered in this sensory bag and in our lives.

Join our free 5 part email series Sensory Solutions and Activities and get our Sensory System Behaviours Easy Reference Cards.

This activity is part of a series of activities with children’s Christmas books. Follow along this week to see the fabulous ideas! 10 bloggers, 10 books and 10 days of Christmas Activities inspired by children books that are faith based. Make sure to follow along, you can take a look at the schedule over at Inspired by Familia blog. Here are our fabulous bloggers: Inspired by Family, Meaningful Mama, Teaching Mama, Beautiful Messy Motherhood, Happy Home Fairy, Simple home Blessings, The Chaos and the Clutter, Creative Family Fun, True Aim Education and Sunshine Whispers!

Christmas Counting I-Spy Sensory Bottle