Five Winter Craft Ideas for Students with Cortical Visual Impairment

Crafts are such an important activity in elementary classrooms, especially special education classrooms. There are so many important skills that can be targeted when completing crafts including fine motor skills, creativity, color identification, choice-making, requesting (scissors, glue, paper, etc), and so much more! Depending on students’ needs, crafts can be adapted to promote success. In this blog post, I share FIVE winter craft ideas for students with cortical visual impairment or other visual impairments.

Before sharing the crafts, I want to share the materials you will need for your students to complete these winter crafts. I tried to use similar materials in the hopes of limiting what you would need to purchase or find for these winter craft ideas.

You will need the following materials:

• Black cardstock
• Printed templates from Google
• Cotton balls
• Ribbon/yarn (optional)
• Glitter (optional)
• Glitter foam sheets
• Felt
• Sandpaper

**If you do not have any or all of the last three materials, you can substitute other textured materials or construction paper.

Winter Craft Idea Number 1: Snowman

How cute is this snowman?? For this craft:

1. Print out a simple snowman template from Google on yellow paper.
2. Cut out the template and glue it onto black cardstock. This contrast will allow students to see where they need to place the cotton balls.
3. Students will then glue on the cotton balls to create their snowman.
4. Students can then use black glitter foam paper or black construction paper for the hat.

Winter Arts and Crafts Idea Number 2: Winter Hat

For this craft:

1. Print a simple hat template from Google on white paper.
2. Cut out this template and glue it onto black cardstock.
3. Students then cut pieces (or the pieces can be precut) of glitter foam paper and glue them onto the hat shape.
4. Students will use cotton balls to decorate the brim of the hat and the pom-pom on top.

**Depending on your students’ visual needs, you can also print the template on black paper, cut it out, and glue it onto a bright colored paper. Since students will be using cotton balls to decorate, the contrast might be greater on a black hat template.**

Craft Number 3: Mitten

For this craft:

1. Print a simple mitten template from Google on white paper.
2. Cut out this template and glue it onto black cardstock.
3. Provide students with their preferred color of felt. Students will cut the felt into smaller pieces
4. Students will glue the felt pieces onto their mitten template.

Not only will there be contrast, but the mitten will also be soft like a real mitten!

What are my last two winter craft ideas??

Craft Number 4: Snowflake

For this craft:

1. The teacher or the student will cut glitter paper into strips.
2. Students will then glue the strips onto black paper in a crisscross pattern.
3. Glitter can then be added to the black paper for a more eye-catching craft.

Winter Craft Number 5: Sled

1. Cut the sandpaper into 5 strips. One of these strips will be a little shorter.
2. Glue the strips next to each other on black paper.
3. Glue a shorter strip across the top of the vertical strips.
4. Optional: hole punch the corners of the vertical strip and add ribbon or yarn.

I hope that your students enjoy getting creative with these winter crafts!

Interested in other CVI-related blog posts? Check these out: 

Go Core Vocabulary Activities for Students with CVI

Teaching Counting to Students with CVI

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