Children’s Christmas Craft Activities

The excitement of Christmas calls for some hands-on creative ideas to keep kids busy. And a home takes on an especially festive air when it’s filled with holiday decorations and artwork made by children. Kids can take the basic directions for these Christmas art projects and add their own personal touches.

Christmas Gift Decorations

For almost no cost, kids can create colorful decorations that can be used for a variety of purposes, according to the Amazing Moms website. Hang on to every small box you empty. This includes pudding mix boxes, toothpick boxes, toothpaste boxes, baking soda boxes and others. Give these to kids along with scraps of Christmas wrapping paper, ribbon, stickers and some string. Tell kids to wrap each of these as if they were actually an actual gift; have them use a sticker to attach a piece of string to the little gifts if they plan to hang them. Kids can attach these to a branch for a mobile, display them in a large glass vase, or put them in a basket for a centerpiece.

Faux Fireplace

Kids can decorate any blank wall by creating a fake fireplace, using an idea from Enchanted Learning. Open up two brown grocery bags, and tape them together. Help kids draw a fireplace on the brown paper, leaving a space for the logs and fire. Pour some red paint into a plate and give it to the kids along with a rectangular sponge to paint “bricks” onto the fireplace. Kids can attach actual sticks or some made from brown construction paper for logs, and then add some red cellophane “fire.” The next step is to add brightly colored construction paper Christmas stockings and glue them onto the mantle.

Hands and Feet Reindeer

All Free Crafts gives directions for a reindeer craft that uses kids’ hands and feet for patterns. Start by showing them how to trace around their shoes on brown construction paper, and then cut out what will be the reindeer’s head. The second step is to make the reindeer’s antlers by tracing their hands onto yellow construction paper and cutting out two of these. Next, they paste the reindeer’s head onto the bottom half of a large piece of poster board, and draw on eyes, nose and mouth. They might like to use a red pom-pom for a nose. Then, they can glue the antlers on the top of the head.

Winter Handprint Scene

In this art project, suggested by kids use their hands, fingers, and fingertips as paintbrushes. Kids create a winter scene on light blue construction paper by first using the side of their hands dipped in brown paint to make tree trunks. Next they use the sides of their fingers to make branches. The winter scene is finished off with fingerprint dots of white snow.