Christmas Crafts to Do with Kids

hi I am a grandmother and I love doing crafts with my grandkids too... this year we are painting pots for plants.. this way it is personal and very special as they can do what the want on the pots.. I have picked up paints from the hardware store that have samples or someone did not like the color... cheap.. and we paint the bottom one color and the rim so far has been gold.. then add a zip lock baggie with potting soil and a pack of seeds or a plant.. GREEN gift.. and we all love plants.. Have fun.. Happy Holidays.. Merry Christmas too..

Well all I can think of at the moment are hand decorated ornaments and clothes pin reindeer.
The ornaments are pretty simple. Just buy some glass ornaments, glue, glitter, or glitter paint. For the older kids they can use regular paint too. Then just cut them loose to decorate them. If you're worried about a mess I would suggest putting down newpaper.
The clothespin reindeer are made from the old fashioned clothes pins glue two facing down and one facing up. Then decorate with googly eyes and small red fluffy balls or circles cut out of felt.
You can also do paper crafts like cut and paste snowmen with construction paper. Or cut out snowflakes and decorate with glitter and markers. You can also make candycane reindeer with brown pipecleaners fashioned into antlers and felt for ears. Same ideas for the nose and eyes as the clothespin reindeer. Hope this offers you some new ideas.

My absolute favorite craft when I was young were
"Walnut Mice". I am sure you have done theses before, but I still love doing them and giving each mouse a different personality to match the person that I am giving them to. We sometimes also use the walnut as a bed, for newborn or first Christmas gifts. Here is a link... This website looks great also. Have fun!
http://crafts.kaboose.com/walnut-shell-mouse.html

You have a lot of great ideas--one we got last year from another "mom" on this site was to take the tumbled tiles that you can get at home depot or lowes, stamp them, and bake. We stamped them with the last name initial and used them as coasters. I still see them at the relatives homes and we use ours daily. They were so easy. We used the small tiles, but if you used a 6x6 it could be used as a hot plate too.
have fun!

Hi P.,
Congrats on crafting w/ kids for so long. Have you done the ornaments that are half cinnamon and half applesauce? Mix together to make a dough,roll out to about 1/4"--1/2". Cut out with cookie cutters. Be sure to use a little straw--like a coffee stirrer to cut out a hole about 1/2" from the edge, no closer, or ornament will break. Leave out on countertop to dry. A cookie sheet or tile surface works best. Sticks to paper towel,foil or wax paper. (Even putting them in a low oven makes them dry too fast and crack.) After a couple hrs, I flipped mine over so they would dry evenly and not look "melted". They will get rock hard. Loop a ribbon or heavy string through the hole to hang. One year I made stars. When they were thoroughly dry, I used gold glitter paint to outline the cut edge. The ornaments look and smell pretty. Use them for pkg decorations too. I reminded my first grade class to follow the star, like the 3 wise men did. Go,Granny,Go! HTH, C.

2 of my favorite sites,
www.craftbits.com and www.dltk-kids.com

These two are full of ideas that will last you another 25 years!
I have crafted for years and years and years, and hardly ever have to go back to the same ones. Of course there are some that friends and family have come to expect from us.
Good Luck and happy crafting.

Just a couple of ideas that I used to do with my children when they were small. We would buy wreaths...any size and decorate them with different ornaments by hot gluing them....or one year we made little bird houses. You can buy a plain bird house at different craft stores for very little and then we painted them and they kids either painted designs on them or glued ornaments on them....personalized the gift and everyone loved these ideas. We did stockings one year too...Lots of fun.

A really fun one that I have done with my kids' classrooms over the years is a Christmas tic-tac-toe game. You can buy either red or green sheets of felt and cut each sheet into four equal squares. For the lines of the game, you can choose to do several things - it just depends on how clean or messy you want to get. You can let the kids draw the lines with marker or they can "glue" glitter on as the lines. For the "Xs" and "Os", again you have a couple of options. If you have the time, cut them out (two different colors). Or, the easier route, colored marbles (the ones with the flat bottoms) you buy at the craft store or two different colored buttons, or anything like that. It's a quick, fun project that the kids get to do themselves. Another really cute one, but very time consuming, is a felt candy cane mouse. You get white felt and cut out a shape similar to a tear drop (this will be the body of the mouse - the body will about 3 - 4 inches). The pointed end will be the "face" of the mouse. You use those black pom poms as the nose and glue it to the very tip of the nose. The you get the wiggly eyes and glue them above the nose. For the ears, you use red felt and cut a bow shape about 3 inches long. On the body of the mouse, above the eyes, you will cut two slits (up and down) about an inch or so apart and you "weave" the ears between them. Basically, your mouse is done. Then you buy real candy canes. On the "fat" part of the body of the mouse you will cut two more slits this time sideways, in the middle of the body. Make them about an inch or so on top of each other and you "weave" the candy cane in those two. Not only is it cute, but it also makes a great tree ornament. Feel free to email me if you have questions on this one. I have a couple of others that I do as teacher gifts but they aren't really crafts for the kids (involves hot glue). HAVE FUN AND ENJOY!!!

I have done this with votive candles because they are cheap but any size will work. Take tissue paper, the same color as the candle, the kind you put in gift bags, cut tissue paper to wrap around the outside of the candle, use a rubber stamp and stamp a design on the paper. I suppose the kids could use markers as well. Once its dry, use a hair dryer to lightly melt the surface of the candle and stick the tissue paper to the candle. Makes the candle appear to be expensive and personalized. I don't know if I explained that well, if not e-mail me and I will answer questions.

What about doing bath products? www.notmartha.org has some hom made bath bombs and lip gloss. What about simply decorating cookies? I would try to think of things that didnt sit around and become clutter. My teacher friends always have a ton of basically junk that they dont want to throw out because there student gave it to them. But its just something more to dust. Not trying to be rude at all here. You can always make little snow globes with glass jars. Oh look on not martha also for the maganets. Those go over wonderful and are great christmas gifts. I use altoids cans for the container just glue tissue paper or paint the box. Good luck.

How about an Advent calendar? You can make them in so many different ways. As simple as one with 2 layers of construction paper. The top one can have little doors to open as each day passes. A little glitter, glue & markers & you're all set. Or as elaborate as a wreath or Christmas tree with little goodies for each day. I've even seen wooden "boxes" with doors that open to little gifts & goodies inside. A search on the internet & trip to Hobby Lobby or Michael's can give you some great ideas & tools to do it. Each child could pick out their own design.

We did a really fun, simple craft yesterday. We decorated pine cones with glitter.

Take a ziploc bag and put glitter in it (kids can choose the color)

Use a glue stick to put glue on the tips of the pine cone.

Drop the pine cone in the bag, close the bag and shake, shake, shake.

Attach a bow to the bottom of the pine cone for hanging and you have a beautiful hand-made ornament for your tree!!

An expensive idea I have done with my kids is to go to Michaels or some other craft store and go to their wood cut-out section. They will have flat perfect ornament size cut-outs of trees, reindeer, stars, and other ornaments. All you need do is drill a small hole (or even just hammer a nail through carefully to create a hole). After that your kids can paint the wood, let one side dry then do the other. You can then spray it with a sealant, thread some ribbon through the hole and you have a great keepsake and presents for teachers or grandparents.

Each cut-out ranges in price from 25 cents to 1 dollar. Paint is inexpensive (if you don't already have some on hand) and can be re-used. Its a great way to "mass-produce" inexpensive presents that are well-appreciated and for your kids to show off their creativity.

We even used washable kid-safe temper-paint for my younger child, which was fine as I sprayed a sealant on it afterwords.

I recommend the painted plate on Stone Oak. You can design your own pottery, plates or tile with your childs hand & foot prints for example. Mondays are half price. I bought a reindeer- antlers her hands and the head was the foot print.I went on Thurs. and full price was $5.00 you can't paint it yourself or let your child or you can pay an additional $5.00 to let them paint it. www.paintedplatestudio.com

I have bought wooden frames from Micheals for $1 and let the kids paint them and then glue teacher things on the frames also from Micheals. When my kids were smaller I just had them paint with water color paint and it was so pretty.

Another idea is melt chocolate and let the kids dip pretzel rods in the chocolate and then add pretty cake decorations, sprinkles or nuts.

Our favorite was always to make cookie (salt)dough ornaments. The recipe is out there on the internet somewhere, but is basically flour, salt, water. We make plain color or add food coloring to make red, green and so on. Just make them flat enough to bake evenly. We developed ideas for Christmas tree shapes, Santas, angels, and so on. Its fun to hang them on the tree each year and see the lollipop my 35 year old made when she was 3. These are fun and inexpensive and not a "kit".

Michael's, the arts and crafts store, has a program called the Knack. You can find out about it online, or in the store. It has ideas for crafts, and tells you what materials you need. It also tells you how hard it is, so you can decide if it's age appropriate. They seem to have lots of cute ideas, and you can decide which ones aren't too difficult or expensive or any other criteria you want to consider.

Hi P.,

You've gotten great responses!

I just thought of a couple more to add to your ever growing list of ideas!

How about painting tiles? You can get individual tiles from Home Depot or Lowes and have the kiddos paint them with Christmas messages, hand prints, etc. Fun and very inexpensive! Or, painting sun-catchers is fun too. I've done the ones where you put the grains of colors in the design and you bake them kind of like stained glass.
Another one I got from Oriental Trading.com is foam door hangers. We are doing those for my 9 year old daughter's class Christmas party. They are easy and inexpensive.

Good luck and have fun!

Hi P.,
My little ones are 20 and 23 and the thing they remember and we still hang them on our tree, are cinnamon ornaments. After we cut them out and they were dry we painted them. When you put them on your tree don't hang them low enough a dog can get them off the tree. My little dog loved them, that added to the memory though. She was removing them one at a time and having a treat. Hope this helped. D.

Hobby Lobby has a lot of craft things in pkgs. for kids to do. You can also get the idea and collect the supplies yourself. Its usually cheaper that way. Also got to orientaltrading.com. They have really inexpensive ideas and crafts. It usually only takes about 3 days to get them too..... Have fun.....

Orientaltrading.com is excellent for seasonal crafts and are very inexpensive!

I would do Christmas ornaments. My parents were both teachers for over 30 years each. They still enjoy hanging ornaments that they received from students.

Oriental Trading Company has great craft kits to choose from. Their web-site is www.orientaltrading.com. They are very inexpensive too.

Go to oriental trading they always have new christmas crafts.
Like magnet pictures frames etc...

Dear P.,
My kids are in their teens and twenties and still talk about those gingerbread houses we built at Christmastime ! they loved making their own houses out of cookies, pretzels, candy and icing. You can make it as natural as you want or not. I never let the little kids eat the whole thing anyway. There are so many designs and materials to use in books and the internet. Maybe I will do it again here with younger kids this year too. Thanks for the idea !
Mama K., soon to be a grandma

Great responses!! The one I do with cinnamon is with glue, then they last forever! I will have to dig out the recipe. If you are interested email me. I love doing crafts with the kids and grandkids. We do something for every holiday. Hobby Lobby is my best friend!! I also look in magazines. I found one for a miniature christmas tree with candy decorations. That was fun, but they ate what was supposed to go on the tree!!
Kudos to you for being such a great mom and GRANDMA!!

Go to www.mom-stuff.com Family Fun Section

Oriental Trading Comany has lots of craft kits, and craft supplies at very reasonable prices. You can find them on line at orientaltradingcompany.com.

A few years ago, we bought several of their refrigerator magnet kits for my son to make and give as Christmas presents. They included fun foam pieces, photo frames, and plastic jewels. All of my family members still proudly display his picture, with his craft work on their refrigerators today.

Merry Christmas!
B.

Little Bird Tales! It's a great site where kids can create online books/cards and can record their voice to each page! Think Shutterfly or Kodak Gallery, only made FOR children (super easy and cute) with an art pad and the ability to record your little ones singing a carol, telling about what they love best about the holidays, school, a friend, etc. The best part is that you can create one and share it with everyone, easily, quickly and without wasting paper, buying stamps, wrapping it and mailing it. Makes a great gift for kids (and even parents love to use it). FUN and super cool. www.littlebirdtales.com

How about baking something with your kids for the teacher or special people in their lives?

Below you'll find a recipe for cute brioche breads they can shape any way they like:
http://nprice.aupairnews.com/2009/12/06/baking-idea-for-s...

I'll add Christmas cookies soon!