Inside: Use this Christmas Elf Craft for Kindness to connect Christmas with social emotional learning and fine motor skills.
Every December, we of course decorate our home and get ready for Christmas. And one of my favorite decorations is when I tape all of my kids’ past Christmas and Hanukkah crafts on my kitchen cabinets.
I love seeing candy canes and Christmas trees and mistletoes cut and glued and glittered up on my walls from years past. We have Christmas handprint crafts like these and Pointillism-inspired Christmas trees, and Snowman Countdown Calendars.
But we love it when we can connect Christmas crafts to social emotional learning at the same time because it connects the holiday to kindness to fine motor skills. It’s a triple win.
So we love this Christmas Elf Kindness Craft.
More Christmas Kindness Activities:
To connect Christmas to social emotional learning, we can read this Christmas Kindness Emergent Reader and spread Christmas Random Acts of Kindness.
We can countdown to Christmas with a Kind Act each day with this paperchain Christmas Kindness Countdown.
We can practice being kind with this Christmas Role Playing Cards and sort kind and unkind actions with this Christmas Kind or Unkind Sort.
You can also use this Christmas Kindness Bundle that includes a bunch of Christmas Kindness Activities.
We can also read these Christmas Kindness books:
Two Lists for Christmas: The Christmas Kindness-List
Secret Santas And The Twelve Days of Christmas Giving
And we make this Christmas Kindness Elf Craft.
How to Use the Christmas Kindness Elf Craft
1. Download and print out the holiday elf you wish to use (color or black and white) and the message you wish it to hold on cardstock and write students’ names on back of the elf. (download them below)
2. If you use the black and white version, encourage students to color the elf using skin color crayons. Make sure to color the hand/mitten too. They can color in the message if you wish.
3. Cut out the elf, the hands, the boots and the message for each student.
4. Using 0.5 inch construction paper strips (red, green, or your choice), have students accordion fold 2 strips each. They’ll cut these in half to have 4 shorter accordion strips, 2 for the arms, and 2 for the legs.
5. Glue or tape on the construction paper strips to where the arms and legs should be on the back of the body. Glue or tape on the boots so it looks like the construction paper legs are in the boots.
6. To hold the printed sign, you’ll need to glue or tape the hands/mittens to the backside of the end of the accordion fold so when you then glue or tape the sign behind the hands, it looks like the elf is holding the sign.
7. To follow up, discuss with students different ways they can be kind during the holiday season and what it means to be their best elf/self.
8. To display the elfs, attach them to a bulletin board or a door along with the list of ways they will be kind this holiday season that you brainstormed as a group.
Download the My Best Elf Christmas Kindness Craft
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