With the holidays soon approaching, we often get caught in the gift-giving matrix (which can quickly become a downhill spiral for some).  This year I wanted to find some easy holiday crafts for kids that my girls and I could do together to make the holidays feel more meaningful and make gift-giving less expensive.

These are fun and easy-to-do crafts.  If you ever want additional ideas, you can pick up the book “175 Easy-to Do Christmas Crafts”– my source of inspiration for these craft ideas.

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Craft 1- Pinecone Place Cards

 

What you’ll need

• a pine cone
• construction paper (green or red)
• glitter
• glue

What to do

Pinecones make for great place card holders at the dinner table.  Gather one pine cone for each family member, and cut out a holly-leaf shape from the construction paper.

Next, outline the leaf with glue and sprinkle on your glitter.

When it’s dry, print a family member’s name on the leaf. (If it’s easier, you could do this step first before the glitter).

Now, when you set your table for the holidays, each family member has a place card.

Craft 2- Standing Reindeer

 

What you’ll need

• toilet paper roll
• red yarn
• small twigs
• googly eyes
• felt or construction paper
• scissors

What to do

Cut four slits on the ends of the toilet paper tube to form four legs on the reindeer.

 

Punch holes  into the sides of the tube for the twigs (antlers) and tie a red yarn around the tube (neck).

Cut out a circle from a  piece of felt or construction paper for the nose and glue it on.  Glue on the googly eyes, too.

Lastly, for a final touch, my daughter wanted her reindeer to be a girl, so she suggested eyelashes. We cut these out of brown construction paper and glued them on right above the eyes.

Isn’t she cute?

Craft 3- Christmas Hand Wreath

 

What you’ll need

• several sheets of construction paper
• glue or masking tape
• scissors
• a paper plate
• marker or pen

 

What to do

Cut out the inner circle of a large paper plate to form a donut shape.

Next, trace around your child’s hands on various colors of construction paper and cut them out.  We used about six different colored sheets of construction paper.

The last step is to glue the hands (or tape them) around the rim of your donut-shaped paper plate cutout.

We embellished the wreath with a red bow (which I traced onto red paper, cut out, and glued onto the final product.)

If you want to hang the wreath, you can glue a loop of yarn to the back and hang it on your door.

Here is our final wreath (propped against a vase.)
My kids really enjoyed these projects. They were a lot of fun, and they were super easy to make.

As you get into holiday gift-giving and crafting, what are some fun holiday crafts for kids you like to make?