Christmas Craft for kids that is USEFUL

You have probably figured out by now that I love to get into the Christmas spirit. When I first started doing craft with the kids, I had to bite my tongue. After years of practice mostly I’m pretty good with setting it up and sitting back with a coffee while I let them explore. So this Christmas I’ve decided that our Christmas craft activities are all going to be useful. No endless piles of rock Santa’s for our house (although they may would make cute name places for lunch 🤔 ).

So here is how you can get your little helpers busy crafting with these easy but useful Christmas Craft ideas.

DIY wrapping paper:

We mentioned last week in the blog on eco-wrapping ideas, how you can use your children’s paintings. But if you don’t have any, it's time to bust out the brown paper. You can buy it in large rolls from many of the discount and craft stores. This stuff is easily compostable so make sure you use non-toxic washable paints (bonus if they are eco friendly pigments). Get a range of brushes and stamps out, give your little ones paints in your fave Christmas colours and let them have fun creating your own custom family wrapping paper.

Make your own cards/ gift tags

This year Freddy learnt to write so I’ll be outsourcing gift tags. But that doesn’t mean PJ has to miss out. Trace out Christmas shapes (your cookie cutters are useful for this). Then provide your kids with markers, sequins and other craft decorations and let them have fun decorating. Once dried you can cut them out, use a hole punch to punch holes at the top and thread them on a ribbon for easy gift tags.

Paper chains

Always a goodie and so good for fine motor skills all it needs is coloured paper, scissors and a stapler. I drew the lines, but older kids can be given a ruler and practice drawing lines. Then I let PJ and Freddy cut them out themselves to practice scissor skills. Once you have all your strips you create a circle with your first loop of paper by bringing it back on itself and stapling into place (the boys thought they looked like bangles). Then you get your next strip and create the loop by passing it through the first ring then stapling the ends together. Continue until you’ve used all your strips and have a chain. You could use Christmas colours or go with a fun and exciting rainbow like this. Then use it to decorate.

Felt Christmas tree decorations

You can tackle this one two ways depending on the age of your children. For younger ones I would pre-cut all of the felt shapes. Then use glue to decorate the shapes with sequins and beads. I would then add the string myself using a needle and embroidery thread. This is what I will be doing with PJ 3 and Freddy 5. But older kids may want to skip the glue and use embroidery needles and thread for it all. This is an excellent fine motor skill development activity. Older children may also want to add beads and sequins in this way as well.

Foam decorations

Using foam shapes from Spotlight, this one is a little more messy but also something that you can let your children run with. We gave the kids the shapes, paint and just let them have fun with paint. They could be used for the tree, strung together as a garland or as table decorations. Whatever shapes you buy could inspire how you use these ones.

Did you give one of them a go? Give us a tag. We'd love to see your little helpers in action spreading the Christmas cheer.