Check out this adorable recycled box reindeer activity for preschoolers! It’s the perfect activity to help strengthen fine motor muscles and work on early math skills. Kids will love threading beads on Rudolph’s stick antlers while they work on making patterns, counting, sorting, and color recognition! There’s a lot of learning going on in this super simple activity.
I love it when learning and crafting collide! This activity looks adorable when complete and there is so much learning in the process of creating these festive reindeer antlers.
What is the best part?! This is a DIY low-waste learning toy which means you are not contributing to the endless pile of plastic manipulatives and tools that are found in almost every classroom for young children! You can feel good about creating this and saving it for future holiday seasons.
Reindeer Activity Supplies:
- Construction paper
- Glue
- Scissors
- Sticks- Get outside and gather some sticks!
- Tape
- Cardboard box
- Wooden beads -We used beads from a local craft store, but these look like they’d work!
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RELATED: Check out Beaded Sticks to see how to take this activity outdoors!
Here’s What We Did:
Step 1:
This reindeer activity is easy to make! First, find a cardboard box and make a reindeer face. We went for the Rudolph look and added a big red nose!
Just cut out simple oval shapes and assemble them like I did below. I didn’t use any templates. I just drew the pieces on construction paper, cut them out, and glued them on the box.
Step 2:
Next, push the sticks through the box. We had to put tape around the sticks to help keep them in place. They still moved around a bit, but with little hands holding on to the sticks that movement is inevitable during this activity.
Step 3:
Now it’s time to set up the reindeer activity. I placed some red and green beads near the box to keep it festive. You can add any color beads you would like!
- White beads would be cute to make snowy antlers.
- Brown beads would make the stick antlers look thicker and more realistic.
- Or add a rainbow of colors to work on color recognition and more complicated patterns.
When my four year old saw the beads, he counted them and started making AB patterns right away. He was pretty excited to get to work as you can see in the picture!
He also loved the challenge of reaching the taller sticks on the other side! I knew he would be working on his fine motor skills during this activity, but he also got quite a gross motor workout by stabilizing his core and balancing to reach those sticks that were taller than him.
Leo took the beads off and put them on the sticks multiple times! He also loved sorting the beads by colors and size. We will definitely keep this activity out for the rest of the week and then I’ll bring this reindeer activity into my preschool classroom to share it with 18 more eager 4 and 5 year olds!
Pin this activity to save it for later!
I hope you give this simple reindeer activity a try! I promise, your little nature lovers will love it as much as my boys.
∼Tara
