This creative snowflake activity has kids building snowflakes on a mirrored surface. Small mirrors, markers and plastic gemstones are all you need. It’s a fun, fine-motor, winter themed activity for toddlers and preschoolers.
I love using mirrors for art and sensory activities here in my daycare. The hooligans regularly paint and create as a group on a large mirror, we use that same mirror as a surface for sensory play, and we often create individual pieces of art with small, mirrored tiles, dry-erase markers and decorative gems. The latter is what we’re using today for our snowflake activity today.
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Great for Fine-Motor Development
With this activity, the kids can make snowflakes with plastic beads, over and over again, on a mirrored surface. It’s a great way for preschoolers to develop their fine motor skills, and to explore interesting shapes and patterns. Plus, kids of all ages LOVE playing with these clear, coloured plastic gem stones.
Dollar Store Items
Using small manipulative on a mirrored surface is a lot of fun. If your children haven’t tried it yet, I would encourage you to add a few mirrors to your stash of art and sensory supplies. Today we’re using a few basic, mirrored tiles that I picked up at the dollar store. I keep them handy in our play area along with a the dry-erase markers and gems, and they’ve become one of our go-to activities here in my daycare. Almost every day, one or more of the hooligans asks to use them.
The kids spend ages doodling on the mirrors and decorating their drawings with the beads. It’s a great activity for all ages. The toddlers and the preschoolers love it, and so do the older kids who sometimes join us on P.A. Days. I love that their creations can be completely open-ended. They can draw and decorate however they wish, or we can get specific and focus on letters, numbers and shapes if we want to.
Today, what with it being so cold and snowy here, we used our mirrors to draw and decorate snowflakes.
For our snowflake building activity, we used:
* A note about our mirrored tiles: I bought our mirrors at the dollar store. They are basic mirrored tiles. They were not produced with the intention of being a play-toy, and are not protected by a frame. The children are supervised while playing with them, and everyone understands that the mirrors must stay on/at the table. I always place the mirrors on cloth or towel to protect the table from both the mirror possibly scratching it, and from the dry erase markers.
You know your child best. You may be more comfortable using a shatterproof, kid-friendly mirror like the ones I’ve linked to in the list of supplies.
Before starting this activity, using a dry-erase marker, I drew a large snowflake on each mirror.
I looked at a few of these snowflake colouring pages to find a simple snowflake that I could draw by hand.
Then it was up to the hooligans to “build” their snowflakes by placing their gems along the lines of the snowflakes.
The kids really enjoyed this wintery activity.
The sound of the glass beads on the mirror is so lovely, and manipulating those gems is great for strengthening fine-motor skills and co-ordination.
Perhaps tomorrow, we’ll use our mirrors for this snowman decorating activity that I spotted over at “And Next Comes L”.
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Jackie is a mom, wife, home daycare provider, and the creative spirit behind Happy Hooligans. She specializes in kids’ crafts and activities, easy recipes, and parenting. She began blogging in 2011, and today, Happy Hooligans inspires more than 2 million parents, caregivers and Early Years Professionals all over the globe.
Lora
What a beautiful way to make snowflakes! We’ve got tons of jewels floating around here.
Anna
They look gorgeous! We love mirror play, we’ll have to try this.
Thanks for including our snowflake printables, so cool to see them used for such a lovely activity 🙂