Christmas Sensory Activities for Homeschooling Families
These Christmas sensory activities will help your younger children regulate their bodies and emotions while you work with the older kids on school.
They can be a fabulous tool for promoting growth in all areas of development, plus they don’t take much time or money to set up!
Learn how you can create these Christmas sensory experiences for your kiddos with only a minute or two of prep.
Add in the Christmas Sensory extension activities to make a complete preschool or kindergarten day!
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Click here if you’d like to learn why sensory bins really are worth the mess!
Jump ahead to one of these Christmas Sensory Activities
Traditional Christmas Symbols Sensory Bin
Rudolph Sensory Bin
Gingerbread Cloud Dough
Polar Express Sensory Bin
Traditional Christmas Symbols Sensory Bin
For this Traditional Christmas symbols sensory bin, I wanted to have a vocabulary-rich box of Christmastime items to help my kids learn the names of things associated with Christmas.
So to start, I grabbed several things from the dollar store Christmas aisle: small plastic ornaments and drums; pencil toppers and erasers, some holly and pine cones, mini bows, pompoms, and a few jingle bells.
Then, at my local crafting store (Hobby Lobby) I looked in the kids crafting section and found felt Santa hats, reindeer (big and small) and a felt Santa.
Here are some of the individual items in the bin.
I put all of it in a plastic bin along with a bag of plastic confetti (called crumb mix) that was also from Hobby Lobby. The plastic confetti gave this bin a truly unique and smooth feel. This is what it looks like:
My youngest son added a fire truck to it because that makes everything more fun! LOL And Santa does ride on a firetruck at our local Christmas parade, so it makes sense, I guess!
It looks a bit like Christmas threw up, but it was a really fun bin that gave us lots of opportunities to work on the names of Christmas nouns.
Extension Activities:
Read Teach The Children the True Meaning of Christmas: A Beloved Christmas Legend by Jeanne Anderson
Or Stars, Stockings, and Shepherds: Discover the Meaning of Christmas Symbols by Shersta Chabot
Check out the Christmas Symbols Lapbook from Homeschool Helper Online
Here’s a look at an older Christmas Symbols sensory bin I made a few years ago from colored pasta and rice.
Find out how easy it is to color rice in this post.
Rudolph Sensory Bin
This simple bin starts with a base of old-fashioned rolled oats because reindeer probably love oats, right?
I added a few red filler gems from the floral section at the dollar store, some googly eyes, and tan pompoms.
Finally, I cut out reindeer antlers from brown craft foam. You can get the Reindeer Antlers Template in the Free Resource Library. There’s both a pdf to trace and an SVG file to cut out with your cutting machine.
I also popped in a couple leftover reindeer from the Traditional Symbols sensory bin above. My youngest loved scooping and pouring the oats in this bin.
Extension idea: Read the classic 1964 Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer by Rick Bunsen (Little Golden Book).
Check out our All About Reindeer Family Style Unit Study.
Fluffy Gingerbread Man Play Dough
I made this cloud dough a lot thicker so that it’s more like cookie dough. If you want it “looser” like a traditional cloud dough, use more liquid and less dry ingredients.
Find out how to make this 3 ingredient no-cook gingerbread man play dough for your kids to pretend baking Christmas cookies here: Gingerbread Man Play Dough
Mixes up in less than 5 minutes and provides hours of sensory fun for your kids!
Get this printable Gingerbread Man Play Dough Recipe and Playmat in the Free Resource Library.
Extension Activity: Read The Gingerbread Man by Karen Schmidt
Find a larger list of classic and fractured Gingerbread Man stories here: Christmas Cookies
Polar Express Sensory Bin
I created a sensory bin for our Polar Express and Hot Chocolate unit study so my younger kids could participate while the big kids did their work.
Start with dried pinto beans as a base for the “hot chocolate”. ALDI and other grocery stores carry very inexpensive, large bags of dried pintos.
Next, add in marshmallows, either large or mini. I used real miniature marshmallows. You could also use the fake crafting ones if you don’t want your kids to just eat all of them. 😊
Then, I cut out some yellow stars from a glitter foam sheet. Or you can use the Polar Express Sensory Bin Stars printable from the Free Resource Library.
I also added some plastic lids from applesauce squeeze pouches to represent the train wheels.
Next, I added a couple of mini Christmas trees along with several jingle bells from the dollar store.
Finally, print out the Polar Express Sensory Bin Tickets from the Free Resource Library and cut them out to complete the bin. I glued mine back to back so that the tickets are double-sided.
Extension Activity: Read the Polar Express book by Chris Van Allsburg
More Christmas Sensory Activities
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