8 Fun Christmas Crafts to Do With Your Kids

When the holidays come around, the first thing I want to do is decorate for Christmas, start recording holiday movies, and crank the Christmas music. Christmas doesn't last very long, so I like to take advantage of the short time I do have to enjoy it.

You know that includes bringing out all of my Christmas cookie recipes But just making cookies doesn't seem like enough to truly take advantage of the season. There's only so much Christmas tree decorating you can do before you run out of activities and you and the family end up sitting on the couch bored watching Christmas movies.

Keep the joyful feelings going for everyone! While a movie or some cheerful music is playing in the background, why not get the kids involved in some fun Christmas themed crafts?! Around here we love Making Fun Holiday Snacks With the Kids and pulling out all of our craft supplies.

Not only does this keep the kids busy, but it gets everyone in the holiday mood. And you're decorating the house anyway right? I never have quite enough decorations to spread throughout the entire house. They seem to get lost from year to year. By allowing your kids to create some great crafts, you get more great decorations, you have some wonderful memories from your children's younger days, your kids feel like they were able to contribute, and they get to see their wonderful creations all over the house.

There just simply aren't enough Fun Activities for Your Kids When It's Too Cold to Go Outside, so whip up some Fun Chex Mix Party Recipes for the Holidays, and get busy crafting. Maybe some of these fun ideas while get your creative juices flowing! Don't stop here though. Get your kids thinking of even more fun crafts they could be doing for the holidays.

These fun ornaments are way too beautiful to hang on the Christmas tree. Hang them outside to catch the winter winds and spin, hang them over the dinner table to enjoy during your Christmas meal, or even hang them with your stockings over the fireplace. We've even been known to hang them throughout the house or make streamers for the windows and fireplace with them.

Materials

• Construction paper
• Ruler
• Scissors
• 3 hole punch
• Fishing wire

Instructions

1. Personally, I would stack at least three pieces of construction paper on top of each other before cutting strips to save time.
2. Lay your ruler down the long side of the construction paper on top of the paper. Trace the width of the ruler, with a pencil, all the way down the length of the paper.
3. Move the ruler over, lining up the side of the ruler with the line you already drew, and trace the width of the ruler all the way down the length of the paper again.
4. Repeat this until you have five strips traced.
5. Hold all three pieces of construction paper together and cut all five of your strips down the lines that you drew.
6. You should have 5 strips of the same length and width in each color.
7. Now it's time to cut them to the right lengths for the project. The lengths you cut are your choice and will make your ornaments different sizes. I suggest leaving two strips 12 inches, cutting two strips to 10 inches, and cutting the last strip to 8 inches.
8. Once cut, punch a hole in the center of both ends of each strip.
9. Line all of your strips up together so the holes match up on one side. Cut a small piece of fishing line and tie the strips together, making sure to knot the fishing line.
10. Now line up the holes on the other sides of the strips. Being different lengths, they will pucker out when lined up. Cut a much longer piece of fishing line, to the length you will want to hang your ornament by, and tie your strips together securely with one side of your fishing line.
11. If you wish to, make a loop with the other side of your fishing line and tie together so you can hang it.

These make for absolutely adorable ornaments to hang on the tree. You can challenge your kids to make them unique, and maybe even put their names on the back with the day so you can remember years later how old your children were when they made it. What's really great in our home is the unique way they turn out with a couple toddlers putting them together.

Materials

• Pieces of white felt paper
• Small piece of orange felt paper
• Colored buttons
• Ribbon
• Fishing wire
• Permanent black marker
• Scissors

Instructions

1. Start by cutting circles of three different sizes in your white foam paper. You might try a protractor, or finding a variety of glasses with bottoms of the right sizes you prefer. You can then just draw or trace your circles without having to freehand them.
2. On your orange foam paper, you may just want to draw carrot shaped noses to cut out for your snowmen ornaments.
3. Finally cut out an appropriate length of ribbon for a scarf you can tie around your snowman's neck and cut fringe in the ends with your scissors.
4. Now it's time to assemble your snowman. Start by cutting a piece of fishing line long enough to cover the length of your snowman's body, and enough to tie into a loop to hang onto the tree.
5. You can either do this part for your kids with a hot glue gun and hot glue sticks, as this will dry almost immediately allowing them to continue, or let them use Elmer's glue, which will need to dry overnight before using.
6. Line up your snowman circles in the proper shape for a snowman and glue the fishing line to the length of your snowman, leaving the remaining fishing line over the top of the snowman's head so it can be tied into a loop.
7. Once the glue has dried, turn the snowman over so the fishing line is on the back and the smallest circle is at the top.
8. Glue your orange nose to the middle of the face of your snowman, draw two eyes above the nose, and a coal mouth (hopefully smiling) with your permanent marker.
9. Glue buttons down the front of your snowman, and finally tie the ribbon around his neck for a scarf.
10. You may glue the different pieces of the snowman on with a hot glue gun and glue sticks for your child, or simply allow him or her to glue them on with Elmer's glue. Remember when using Elmer's glue, the snowman will need an appropriate time to dry before it can be handled again.

What a precious little snow globe that your kids can make themselves! Hang it from the tree or display them on a shelf. I encouraged my little one to come up with different scenes as if he were putting together a whole town on our Christmas tree (or around our home), and he was so creative. With just a few 10cent packages of plastic figures from Hobby Lobby or Wal-mart, we had a lot of fun making a bunch of these.

Materials

• 9-ounce clear plastic cup
• Silver poster board
• Craft scissors
• Polyester batting
• Miniature trees
• Miniature animals or people
• Metallic beads
• Fishing wire
• Elmer's glue (or hot glue gun and glue sticks)

Instructions

1. You will want to begin by tracing the open side of your plastic cup on the back side of your silver poster board.
2. With your craft scissors, cut your circle out outside of the line that you drew by about 1/8 of an inch.
3. Lay your circle, silver side up, flat on the table. Cut a little bit of batting out to cover your circle. Remember it should fit inside your cup when placed on top.
4. Pull it apart and fashion it in a circle so that silver is showing in the center. Simultaneously fit your miniature trees and animals amongst your polyester batting, and glue them all down. I suggest using a hot glue glue so that it will glue down right away and stay in the form that your child(ren) wants.
5. Poke a hole in the bottom of your plastic cup if you are using it as an ornament.
6. Cut a piece of fishing line about 5 inches long. Tie a tight knot in one side and slide one bead onto the line.
7. Thread the fishing line from the inside of the cup through the bottom of the cup, out the other side. Tie a knot in the fishing line securing it tightly to the other side.
8. Slide 2-3 more beads onto your fishing line and then tie a knot with the end back at the bottom next to the cup. The beads will end up being part of the loop to hang it on the tree.

What a beautiful decoration to hang in the window to display to guests and neighbors. This one's a little bit more difficult, but only takes a little patience to master. The first few snowflakes were kind of rough for my 3 year old, but then he got the hang of it and they started looking really nice.

Materials

• White piece of paper
• Pencil
• Wax paper
• White string
• Paper cup
• Elmer's glue
• Watercolors (blue)
• Paintbrush
• Fishing Line
• Scissors

Instructions

1. I would begin by tracing the adjoining snowflake pattern onto a white piece of paper with your pencil. (There's a circle in the middle, six figure 8s coming out from the middle circle, and six humps joining the figure 8s together.) But any snowflake pattern would work.
2. Once you have your pattern, tape your piece of wax paper over the top of it. If you would like to do more than one snowflake at a time, make several of these patterns before taping wax paper over each of them.
3. Pour about a half inch of Elmer's glue into a small paper cup for any snowflakes being done.
4. For each snowflake you will be cutting pieces of string, soaking them in glue, and laying them over the lines you have drawn on the original paper, on top of the wax paper of course. You'll want to do this one piece at a time rather than trying to do the whole thing at once.
5. I would start with one piece for the center circle, then cut one piece for each figure eight, and finally cut individual pieces for the final six humps. You will want to make sure all edges touch and seal as this will be critical when filling your shapes and coloring them.
6. When you are finished placing all of your strings, place a single dot of glue on any place two strings meet together, just to secure them.
7. Before you finish, cut and tie a piece of fishing line carefully through one of your outside circles, to be used to hang your snowflake. I would tape it down to your table until your are completely finished to keep it from moving the snowflake and ruining your hard work.
8. Let your snowflakes dry completely for at least 12 hours before continuing.
9. When dry, now comes the fun part! One at a time, fill the spaces you desire being colored completely with glue.
10. Dip your paintbrush into your watercolor and use your paintbrush to mix the color chosen into your pools of glue (remember one at a time). I filled in the center circle, outside circles, and diamond like shapes between your figure 8s.
11. Dry for at least 24 hours before peeling them from your wax paper and hanging them.

Not only are these decorations beautiful, but they make amazing centerpieces on your holiday dinner table. Your kids are really going to love putting these together with your help. My little one even thought to mix ribbon patterns by alternating the twists on the tree.

Materials

• Foam cones of different heights
• Presewn or pleated decorating ribbon
• Elmer's glue (or hot glue gun and glue sticks)
• Sewing pins with pretty colored balls on the ends

Instructions

1. Start by laying your cones on their sides and setting your sewing pins somewhere within grabbing distance.
2. Draw a medium line of glue along the bottom of your cone. Place the edge of your ribbon at the beginning of your glue line and secure it by sticking one of your bedazzled sewing pins all the way through it into your cone.
3. Twist your cone and continue pushing your ribbon into your glue and securing it with a pin every 2 inches or so.
4. When you reach the ribbon again on the other side, simple overlap a tad and start draw your glue line, laying your ribbon, and securing it with pins, just above the first line.
5. You are essentially gluing, securing, and wrapping your ribbon from the bottom of your cone all the way up to the the top point.
6. The pins not only allow you to use Elmer's glue for creating your trees, and therefore your kids can do this project on their own, but the pins end up looking like ornaments if you choose not to remove them after the drying process.
7. When finished, allow your trees to dry for at least 24 hours before trying to use them in your decorations.
8. I suggest using presewn or pleated ribbon in order to give the tree a feathered look. By simply using flat ribbon, your tree will be rather flat as well. Your choice.

What cute little creatures to greet your guests at the front door or even adorn a side table with other Christmas decorations! You're going to love having these creations in your home. We've personally been saving up all of our toilet paper rolls this year just for crafts just as these. My son really loved the idea of getting to cut up old socks of his for the hats!

Materials

• Paint
• Paintbrushes
• 2 toilet paper tubes (1 cut into 2 different lengths)
• Colored paper (for faces and mittens)
• Colored pencils
• Elmer's glue
• Sheet music designed paper
• 3 small child's socks
• Raffia
• Scissors

Instructions

1. Start this project by cutting the top one-third off of one of your toilet paper rolls.
2. Paint each of your three carolers your desired color and set aside to dry while you are preparing the rest of your pieces.
3. Cut circles out of your colored paper for your carolers' faces and mitten shapes for their mittens.
4. Draw little faces on each of your circles. I suggest closed eyes, circle mouths (like they're singing), and a little pink on their cheeks (because it's cold outside).
5. Now cut small rectangles out of your music paper and fold each in half for sheet music for each of your carolers.
6. Glue your circles close to the top of each of your tubes, leaving about a half inch for their hats.
7. For their mittens and sheet music, I highly suggest that you glue the mittens to your sheet music pieces first before gluing the mittens to the middle of your toilet paper tubes.
8. You may have to let each piece dry before carefully adding the next item.
9. While all of these pieces are drying on your carolers, we are going to make their hats.
10. For their hats, fold the top of each sock down a little for the bottom of the hat, and cut a little of the foot off of the bottom.
11. Squeeze the bottom of each sock, where you just cut it, together and tie a piece of your raffia around it to hold it closed.
12. Your carolers will be complete when you pull a sock hat onto each of your little characters.

These little ornaments will be delightfully fun, not only for your kids to make, but to feature on your tree. And they are so much easier to make than you think! Especially around this time of year, you can get a bag full of different sized beads for really cheap in the craft section. We love taking advantage of any clearance craft items for projects such as this.

Materials

• Pipe cleaners
• Small and large wooden beads
• Small jingle bells
• Felt in different colors
• Hot glue gun
• Glue sticks
• Scissors
• Ribbon
• Permanent markers with fine points

Instructions

1. To do ahead of time: The hats will require the use of hot glue, as Elmer's glue will not stick to felt. To make the hats, cut semi-circles out of your felt, wrap each one together to form a cone with a small hole on top, then hot glue the edges together, holding them until the glue dries. In this way, you can simply provide your children a stack of possible hats to use on their elves.
2. Lay out all of your materials on the table so that you can access them easily.
3. Start your first elf by bending one whole pipe cleaner in half.
4. Hold it with the bent end up, and starting feeding your beads onto it.
5. First, feed a large body bead onto your pie cleaner to about halfway down. The two ends sticking out at the bottom are going to be your elf's legs.
6. Next, slide a head bead onto your pipe cleaner.
7. Then, slide a hat of your choice (that you made before we started the activity) onto your pipe cleaner.
8. Finally, slide a little bell onto your pipe cleaner.
9. You want to leave enough room at the top to make a loop with your folded pipe cleaner top, but enough room between the head and body beads to wrap a scarf and another pipe cleaner for your elf's arms.
10. Now, it's time to make the legs. The other beads should stay in place while you are working on your elf's legs.
11. Slide about four small beads onto each pipe cleaner end and then bend the bottoms to make little feet and hold your leg beads on.
12. Now it's time to cut another pipe cleaner in half to make your arms.
13. Wrap this pipe cleaner around the first between the body bead and the head bead. slide about 3-4 small beads, similar to the ones you used for the legs, onto each side to make arms. Bend the ends of each side to make hands and to hold the beads onto the arms.
14. Finally, cut a long skinny piece of felt (about 4 inches by 1/2 inch) for the scarf. Cut scarf fringe into each end and then cut a long slit down the middle of one side so your can slide the other side of the scarf through.
15. Wrap the scarf between the arms and the head and slide one side through the other to secure it.
16. Make a loop with the top of your original folded pipe cleaner by simply expanding the fold to give yourself something to hang the elf from, and also keep all of your beads on.
17. To finish, an adult should secure the ends, where the beads meet the end of each pipe cleaner, with hot glue. This way, as the ornaments are being moved around, and even stored for the next year's Christmas tree, the beads don't fall off.

These are SO simple, but SO cute at the same time! We made something similar in the fall for our birdfeeders, so my son already knew exactly what to do. He had a blast (and so did I) gluing each of the precious little beads in place. Aren't they adorable!

Materials

• Pinecones
• Felt/fabric beads (or any other kind really)
• Elmer's glue (or hot glue)
• Bottle cap/wooden coins/solid base
• (optional) star-shaped beads

Instructions

1. Begin this simple project by gluing your pinecones straight up on your base, whether you chose bottle caps, wooden coins, or some other similar item.
2. You will want to leave your pinecones alone long enough to dry before trying to work with them.
3. Once dry, one at a time, squirt a small drop of glue into an open spot in your pinecone and immediately stuff a small felt or fabric bead into place.
4. Squirt a small drop of glue into another open spot in your pinecone and then stuff another bead into place.
5. Repeat this process until your pinecone is filled. Do this same thing with your other pinecones.
6. Let dry completely before using for decoration.

Making Christmas ornaments, decorations, and other crafts with your kids should really get everyone into the Christmas spirit. And think, all the while your kids are having fun making fun items they can be proud of, and making fun Christmas memories that they will have for a lifetime, you will have creative new decorations for your home, and unique keepsakes to remind you of these important days in your children's lives.

Make this a regular holiday tradition that you can repeat every year, and your kids will have something special that they can look forward to every year. I know that one of the biggest things I look forward to at our family's home this year is the plate of plain sugar cookies surrounded by all of the fun toppings possible to make amazing Christmas cookies.

Everyone in the household gets to go by and make their own one-of-a-kind cookies to enjoy in front of the fireplace on Christmas day. I can't wait! Don't you want something like this to share with your family? And looking through your home every year, you'll remember every past year with your children making fun Christmas crafts.

One day, your children can even put these on their Christmas trees as they add their own children's crafts to the collection. I sure hope you enjoy these! I know we did!