This Alphabet Christmas Lights activity was lots of fun and extremely versatile. Plus, it was excellent practice for matching capital and lowercase letters! We used it as a bathtub activity (and my boys absolutely loved it)…but it could just as easily be adapted to use on a wall or even on the floor!
Here’s what you’ll need: sheets of craft foam in various colors (or construction paper, if you don’t plan on using it in the bathtub), scissors, a permanent black marker, clothespins, suction-cup hooks, and string (we used the rubber-like string that is used for making friendship bracelets).
1. Make a pattern for a Christmas lightbulb out of an index card or piece of cardstock. I just folded an index card in half and cut a lightbulb shape so that it would be symmetrical. Then use the pattern to cut out 26 bulbs from your various colors of craft foam.
2. Once all of your lightbulbs are cut from the craft foam, write a lowercase letter on each bulb.
3. Grab your clothespins and write a capital letter on each one.
4. Attach your suction cup to your bathtub wall and cut your string the desired length.
5. Add the clothespins (in alphabetical order, of course).
6. Once you’re ready, dump all of your lightbulbs (with lowercase letters written on them) into the bath water.
7. Let your child begin hanging the lowercase lightbulbs onto the capital clothespins!
Encourage your child to continue until all letters are hung!
If your kids are anything like mine, they’ll yank them off the clothespins just so the fun can continue!
All done!
Check out more ideas for Christmas here and on our Christmas Pinterest board!
Wow! I was super excited about matching lights with clothespins. That was before I got to the part about the bathtub. What a fun idea! My kiddos would love it!
Oh!! I LOVE this idea! It is definitely on my to do list. :-)
I love this SOOOOOO much. So fun!
Oh my goodness, love this so much! I’ve been trying to think what we were going to do for our theme bath for the month and this is it! Off to share!
What a great way to encourage spelling and word recognition too! An easy and fun way and they don’t know they are learning. MY son is a little duck already, something like this and I’m never getting him out of the bathtub lol
What a fantastic idea :)
This is a cute idea. You could also make mittens instead of light bulbs & use the story of the three little kittens who ” washed their mittens & hung them up to dry”
Great idea!