Ribbon Christmas Tree

This ribbon Christmas tree activity is the most awesome therapy activity ever. It incorporates practicing tying into a nice craft that looks beautiful when it is done. The kids all loved it, and they were all very proud of what they had accomplished. Most of the kids started the activity by saying that they didn’t know how to tie. By the end of the activity, all of them were tying their knots by themselves. I did have to go back and even them up so that there was the same amount of ribbon on each side, but that was a small part of it.

I started out by first collecting sticks in my backyard. If you have a lot of time, you could have the kids collect their own sticks, but my time is limited. I had 3 or 4 different types of wire edged ribbon for the kids to use, and I had them cut all the same lengths of the ribbon and we trimmed it at the end. I wanted them to be able to tie easily, so I didn’t want the ribbon to be too short to tie.

Then you just tie the ribbon in knots onto the stick. One group had some gold ribbon to go at the top as a star. You either have the kids fix the uneven ones if they can, or you go back and even things up so that there is equal amount of ribbon on both sides of the knot.

I then cut the ribbon in a tree shape. Some kids I had do this on their own, some kids I cut one side, and had them do the other side to match, and some kids I cut for them due to time constraints. Some turned out fluffy, and others were more Charlie brown tree like, but every single one was beautiful. I had some Styrofoam balls, and cut a flat side to them, then we just stuck our sticks in the Styrofoam to make them stand up.

I love this project so much, I am going to modify it to use at different times of the year. Expect to see this one again in different colors. Since the ribbon has wire edges, it makes it easy to practice the tying.

Materials:

• Sticks/twigs
• 3-4 different wired edged ribbon
• Styrofoam balls
• Scissors

Skills:

• ADL – tying
• Fine motor
• Bimanual
• Motor planning
• Visual perceptual
• Scissor cutting

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Therapy Fun Zone

Tonya is a pediatric Occupational Therapist, and loves creating things to work on skills and solve problems.

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