This is a sticky window craft that turns a plain drawing of a sheep into a fluffy one, one cotton wool ball at a time. You tape a clear sticky sheet to the window, sketch a sheep on it, and a child presses cotton wool onto the sticky surface to give it its wool. It works the pincer grip, sneaks in some counting, and best of all the cotton wool peels straight off again, so it can be done over and over. Ages 1.5 to 3.
Drawing the sheep
Art is not my strong point, so I keep the sheep simple: a fluffy cloud shape for the body, four straight black legs, and a little black face off to one side. If drawing it freehand feels like too much, trace a printed picture. Use a permanent marker on the non-sticky side of a sheet of clear sticky-back plastic, sometimes called contact paper.
Peel off the backing and tape the sheet to a window at a child’s height with the sticky side facing out into the room. Now the whole sheep is a sticky surface waiting to be covered, and the daylight behind it makes it glow.
Adding the wool
Set out a tub of cotton wool balls and show a child how to press one onto the sheep’s body. It sticks, and that little moment of it catching and holding is what makes the activity. Pinching up each ball and pressing it on is good pincer practice, the same grip used later for a pencil.
A bit of counting tends to creep in by itself. Mine counted every ball as it went on, all the way to eleven, which was about the point he discovered that the cotton wool peels off just as easily as it sticks on. Sticking them on and pulling them off again is its own game, and just as good for little fingers.
The finished flock
Keep going and the sheep ends up gloriously woolly, a soft white cloud against the light. It might end up patchy, or completely covered, or stripped bare again five minutes later, and all three are fine. The making is the point, not a neat finished picture, and because nothing is glued it resets in seconds for the next round.
For another no-prep fine motor activity, our CD stacking activity works the same careful hand control with old CDs and a spindle. And for more farm animals to color, our free animal coloring pages have plenty of sheep and friends.