Three FUN Mooseltoe Activities
Today it is time for the Read and Play Christmas edition where we share lots of fun Children's Book Extension Ideas! We are sharing three fun Mooseltoe Activities perfect for your preschooler, kindergartner or young elementary kids. Shopping links for our affiliate partners are used in this post.
If you've never read the book Mooseltoe it's pretty funny and it's the Christmas spin off of the equally funny Moosestache.
I love the illustrations in this book and even without the story, they would make the kids (and me) giggle. There are some great read-along videos for mooseltoe too. Here is a fun one.
Mooseltoe Beaded Moosestache Craft
Looking at the moose's mustache, it kind of reminded me of pipe cleaners the way they are so moldable. I thought it would be so fun to make our own Moostaches- and it was a fun Fine Motor Activity to boot.
Materials:
- Poly Beads or Tri Beads
- Brown Pipe Cleaners (or here's a bulk brown pack)
- Clothespins
Directions:
After you read the Mooseltoe or Moostache books, set out a bowl of each type of bead and show your child how to thread the beads onto the pipe cleaners, spacing them out as they like, to look like his mustache. When you have 5 or 6 pipe cleaners done, you can pinch them into the clothespin, and hold them up to see how your Moosetache looks!
The tri beads had much smaller holes but my 4 year old daughter was still able to it pretty well. The pony beads might be easier for younger kids. We liked how the tri beads looked like Christmas tree lights!
When ours was ready, I held her up to the mirror and told her to put on her moosestache and she laughed so hard! It was so fun! She loved that she looked just like the picture on the cover!
Mooseltoe Moosestache Straw
The moosestache we made reminded me of the funny mustache straws I see all over the place. I thought we could just use our pipe cleaners on the straw but they were heavy and off balance.
Instead we made construction paper Mooseltoe Straws.
Materials:
- Brown Cardstock, Craft Foam or Construction Paper
- Scissors
- Bendy straws
- Sticker gems
Directions:
- Prep by cutting out mustaches from construction paper.
- Have your kids decorate them with stick on jewels.
- Cut an X in the center to slide it onto the straws.
I'd recommend using craft foam though, the jewels weighted down the paper a little. Otherwise you could also use normal paper stickers on construction paper rather than the jewels and they wouldn't weight it down as much.
Fine Motor Moosestache Decorating
My daughter came up with this one on her own and I love it!
She grabbed the clothespin we used for the moosestache and tried picking up the beads with it. The kind of clothespins that we have are tapered at the opening so she figured out that if she turned it upside down and used the handle side to pinch them, she could pick up the beads.
She loved matching the beads to the decorations on the cover of the Mooseltoe book. What an easy and fun fine motor skill activity!
This was originally published 10 years ago! But we love looking back through old memories.
Have you done any Mooseltoe or Moosestache activities with this book? Let's hear about them in the comments!
Christmas Read and Play
These were my three activities to the Christmas Read and Play series, a blog hope with more than 20 bloggers, each selecting a book and sharing ideas! Check them all out at Pleasantest Thing's Christmas Read and Play page or on the Read and Play Pinterest Board!
I hadn’t heard of this book but it sounds cute. I just love the straw mustache! lol!