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3 Fine Motor Activities that Reuse Coffee Sleeves

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Welcome back for a VERY special Fine Motor Fridays! Not only are we sharing new fine motor activities with you today but we are kicking off a great giveaway for ANYONE interested in Fine Motor Skills! So Check out these fun ways to reuse your coffee sleeves and then stick around at the bottom for the giveaway!

3 Fine Motor Activities that Reuse Coffee Sleeves on Lalymom.com - Reindeer coffee sleeves - check out the other ideas too!

 

LalyDad and I are coffee drinkers and while we usually make our own at home or the office, we occasionally spring for a coffee from a coffee shop. I've saved a few of the coffee sleeves to use for crafts and activities, and we finally got a chance to try them out.

Now maybe you are here for fine motor skills ideas or maybe you saw one of these ideas and have no desire to use them with kids. Either way, welcome, thanks for coming by!

One day I was just sitting there playing with a coffee sleeve and I was drawn to the way you squeeze them to make them into a circle. and I thought it would be interesting to explore ways to get the kids to manipulate them.

Coffee Sleeve Rudolph Craft

I wanted to make the coffee sleeve into a kind of munching puppet to encourage the kids to open and close it all the way. I played around with a few different ways to bring the coffee sleeve to life and ended up with this Rudolph the Red nosed Reindeer. He's pretty cute and my 4 year old knew instantly what he was supposed to be.

To make your own Rudolph all you need is a red pom pom, two big googlie eyes, a brown pipe cleaner, a coffee sleeve and ideally a hot glue gun.

Glue your red pom pom at the top center (in other words the wider opening end). Fold the pipe cleaner in half and bend each end to look like antlers.

Now. You have a decision to make. If you are making this more as a craft, rather than a fine motor tool, you might want to put the antlers and eyes at the opposite end like in the picture at the top. If you are making it for a fine motor tool, placing them there may get in the way of your child's hand.

To make it like the craft in the top picture, snip a small slit in the bottom center of the coffee sleeve and push the folded center of the pipe cleaner into the slit. Glue in place, ideally with hot glue.

To make it easier for little hands to handle poke a small hole just behind the red nose, poke the folded center of the pipe cleaner through there and press it against the inside of the coffee sleeve. Glue it in place, ideally with hot glue right where my index finger is pointing (the inside of the coffee sleeve).

Reindeer Coffee Sleeve for Fine Motor Skills on Lalymom

Either way once your pipe cleaner is where you want it you can glue your googlie eyes to the pipe cleaners.

I set ours out with a container full of pom poms and silicone baking cups to fill and spill. My four year old loves making him eat all fast and silly, almost like cookie monster! It was so silly and fun!

3 Christmas Themed Fine Motor Activities Using coffee sleeves on Lalymom.com - click through to see all the ideas.

Fine Motor Stamped Kid-made Wrapping Paper

Coffee Sleeve Stamping to Make Christmas Wrapping Paper on Lalymom.com Click through for two more fun ways to use coffee sleeves!

Looking at the shapes made by the coffee sleeves I thought they would make super fun paint stamps! You could use them to make SO many shapes. For Christmas they can be used to make ornaments, stringed lights, poinsettia blooms, reindeer hoof tracks and pine cones.

For non-holidays you could make butterflies, caterpillars, lightning bugs, lemons, diamonds, squares, circles…okay SO many more things.

We went for some red and green ornament shapes. Easy peasy! Just pour out paints and shape the coffee sleeves into round or pointed ornaments as you go. Feel free to decorate them or leave them plain! Either way they are pretty and would make great wrapping paper if done on a large roll of paper!

Use a coffee sleeve to stamp patterns on paper - makes awesome gift wrap and great for kids. Fine motor skills practice by squeezing the sleeve to alter the shape.

Decorate and Stack Christmas Trees

Use a coffee sleeve to stamp patterns on paper - makes awesome gift wrap and great for kids. Fine motor skills practice by squeezing the sleeve to alter the shape.

These were kind of just fun art projects. We broke out the paints, paper punches and construction paper, jewel stickers and scissors.

We painted the coffee sleeves green and let them dry. That was the hard part, haha. Next we decorated them and to make them look more like Christmas trees we used scissors to snip lines in the coffee sleeves.

We stacked them up on our paper towel holder and when my daughter asked for a star for the top I cut up a toilet paper roll, cut a star out of yellow paper and glued it to the roll. Ding. Star on top. My two year old like taking this on and off more, where as my four year old liked the decorating part more.

Fine Motor Fridays

Fine Motor Fridays Collaborative Weekly Series from Lalymom

It's a special edition of Fine Motor Fridays this week! Along with several AWESOME Fine Motor Activities below, we also invite you to win a copy of our new book! Click on through to the other FMF gals to see the great fine motor ideas and enter to win!

Candy Cane Pipe Cleaner Garland from Craftulate
Cute Mini Christmas Trees from Powerful Mothering
Invitation to Create: Christmas Ornaments from P is for Preschooler
Color Matching Reindeer Clothespin Activity from School Time Snippets
Pouch Cap Wreath from House of Burke
Christmas Scissor Skills and Craft Activity from Little Bins for Little Hands
Christmas Lights on the Light Table from Still Playing School
DIY Fine Motor Kit from Stir the Wonder
Scented Snowflake Soup from And Next Comes L

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