December craft

[ChristineF]

I want to make this December a fun one for my kids, with lots of crafty stuff.
Like one new thing for every day, like an activities advent calendar. So I need some inspiration.
My kids are 2,5 years and 6 months, so it'll be mostly my 2,5 year old taking part. What are your favorite Christmas themed craft to do with small kids?
Please share, and bonus points for tutorials and or recepies.

[winipeg1]

I do this every year, a different christmas activity each day until the 25th Dec.
Here is my Christmas PIN board- http://www.pinterest.com/winipeg1/christmas/ (ignore the elf stuff- Im in the middle of moving all elf pins to his own board)
I will have a quick look for some photos on my pc to post here.

[winipeg1]

Excuse the unedited photos. Here are some of the more successful activities.

Baking cookies xmas eve is a must here



Xmas cards-



list to Santa


crafts-


baking-

[winipeg1]

Me again....

I don't just do art crafts everyday. We do Christmas Activities so this includes, putting the tree up, going to see Santa, family film night every Sunday is a Christmas film, there is house by us that has amazing lights so we go see that and they collect money for charity. We go to a panto, sledging, and we read a Christmas book every night at bedtime.

Can you tell I LOVE Christmas

[ChristineF]

Thank you so much for all the great ideas! I LOVE Christmas too, bonus points of having kids is I get to go all out during December

[JennNtheBoys]

I did a hand print ornament with the kids when they were little. I had made a Santa hand print my first year in school and I still have that, so I decided to make them with my kids also. Baking is always fun with the little ones they like to decorate them. Homemade snow globes... I let the kids pick out some snowmen and people from christmas village sets, I glued them to the inside lid of a baby food jar, let then fill the jar with water and add glitter, put the lid on and wholla! Mini Gingerbread houses using graham crackers... use a small milk carton as the shape to stick the crackers to.

Our only failed craft attempt were those little kits you can buy with pom poms and pipe cleaners and you can make snowmen, santas, penguins etc.... the glue just would not hold anything in place.... there was a huge meltdown over this one.

[MommaTrish]

We do salt dough ornaments every year. And last year we spent two days making giant snowflakes to hang on the wall out of paint, glitter, and popsicle sticks. (That was a huge hit) The older two work on sewing skills each year and make little stuffed things. I draw them the shapes on felt and they cut and sew. I might let Bella this year (5) and just use an exacto knife to cut the holes for her and let her use a plastic yarn needle. That's how I started both boys learning.

snowflakes

[jak]

I did all these pages of stuff we did for Christmas last year.

1. Christmas craft - a wreath made from cut outs of my kids' hands and Christmas cards for the grandparents using my old paper scrapping supplies!



2. Christmas baking



3. Letters to Santa, which I found on the internet.

[eve11ne]

i need to watch this thread
love all these ideas ladies, please keep them coming!

[britaneejean]

cotton ball snowman, tree ornament using a stick and different lengths of green ribbon (or any ribbon if you're ok with that) knotted down the length, candy cane reindeer, snowflakes (either paper or popsicle sticks), letters to Santa, handprint ornament, you can use a q-tip to paint ornaments on a green paper tree, & a countdown chain.

that's everything i can think of for now. i'll try to think up more! there are also craft kits that come out for the season that are cute! we've gotten a few from Target for $5 & it's kept my girls really occupied. oh! and we've gotten the foam stickers & they've gone to town with putting them all over a few papers. i got those at Target and they were winter themed. we still have half the stickers for this year. it helps with fine motor skills too

for baking, an really easy one we did last year was pretzels with a hershey kiss on top & a M&M pressed down into it. it took a lot of time but that's because my girls unwrapped every kiss, laid out every pretzel then placed the kisses on top. it was easy though...just time consuming. and then decorating cookies is a must for us too.

[ChristineF]

Lots of fabulous ideas here. I knew I asked in the right place. Thank you.

[jovi_girl]

I have a christmas ideas, plus a kids stuff pin board full of stuff like this. Im the craft coordinator for our playgroup so im forever pinning ideas http://www.pinterest.com/lani81/