10 Fun and Easy Christmas Crafts for Kids

My 4 year old son and I have had a lot of fun doing crafts this year together. He’s always loved playing with scissors and glue, but he really ramped it up at the end of this year just in time for fall and winter, and has asked to do crafts every morning, first thing upon waking up.

In fact, when his grandparents on my side visited this last week, that’s all he wanted, craft supplies and for them to sit down and do crafts with them. I really think it has more to do with the focused one-on-one time he gets when someone sits down to work on a craft with him, but I know he gets enjoyment out of creating new things as well. Every day they brought more…buttons, ribbon, paper plates, paint. It was a very exciting week for him!

And it helps us to decorate our home as well for Christmas. For the last decade or so my husband and I lived in Arizona together in a modest home, but not one with much room for decorations. We couldn’t have a full size tree, and there weren’t many places to put Christmas decorations. So when we moved last Christmas, most of our Christmas decorations stayed behind and were donated to families that really wanted them.

Then we move to Colorado and get a home that has plenty of space, and we didn’t have anything to decorate with for the holidays. So that, and my son’s sudden excitement for crafts have gone well together this year. All of his beautiful holiday crafts have filled our Christmas tree and our home with lots of beauty. I just had to share them with you!

Homemade Popcorn Streamer

So we read the book If You Take a Mouse to the Movies together, and in it, the mouse sees someone creating a popcorn streamer for their Christmas tree and wants to do one himself. My son loved the idea so much, that he wanted to do one for our tree. It really didn’t take much to pop our own popcorn, and string them up with a needle and thread, and he learned a valuable lesson in how to sew.

Supplies

• Popcorn
• Needle
• Thread
• Buttons
• Scissors

Instructions

1. Pop your popcorn. It really doesn’t matter if this is organic popcorn or not if you’re just using it to string a streamer for your Christmas tree. We used microwave popcorn for our tree and popped organic popcorn to eat on the side when we were done.
2. Tie a knot in your thread onto a button for the end of your streamer, so that no popcorn comes off the end.
3. Thread your needle with plenty of thread and start stringing. This is the fun part.
4. When you’re done, make sure to tie a knot in the end onto another button to finish off your popcorn streamer.

Paper Plate Reindeer

It’s a pain to try and keep tons of the right colors of construction paper available for all of the different colors we need for crafts. So instead of wasting a bunch of construction paper, we simply color what we need onto white paper with water colors, that we can use for all of our needs for each craft.

Supplies

• Paper plate
• White paper
• Watercolors
• Scissors
• Glue stick
• Black marker

Instructions

1. Paint your paper plate the color you want for your reindeer’s face.
2. Paint your white paper with the colors you want for your reindeer’s antlers, eyes, and nose.
3. While drying, cut out circles for the white of the reindeer’s eyes. Glue them on to your plate.
4. Cut out a circle for the nose, freehand cut some antlers out, and cut out little circles for the colored part of the eyes. Glue them all onto your reindeer.
5. With the marker, draw the mouth.

Paper Plate Snowmen

I really enjoy these cute little crafts and my son loves to see what pictures or creatures he can create using all of our various craft supplies. We had just made paper plate reindeer, and we decided to try and make a few different scenes next.

Supplies

• Paper plate
• White paper
• Watercolors
• Scissors
• One cotton ball
• Glue stick

Instructions

1. Paint the paper plate for your background. I choose blue for winter.
2. Cut out circles for the head and body of the snowman and glue them to your paper plate.
3. Paint a white piece of paper with the colors you want for your arms, scarf, a hat, the carrot nose, and the coal for his eyes and buttons.
4. Cut them out and glue them to your snowman.
5. Finally, pull apart your cotton ball and glue it down to the bottom for snow.

Fingerprint Christmas Trees

We did something similar to this with bats for Halloween and it turned out really nice. My son really likes this craft because he gets the chance to really get his hands dirty. I like this craft because it’s so easy, and it doesn’t even need a paintbrush to do. Some white paper, some watercolors and your fingers are sufficient.

Supplies

• White paper
• Piece of construction paper
• Watercolors
• Scissors

Instructions

1. Start by tracing out a Christmas tree shape on your construction paper and cut it out.
2. Lay it on top of your white paper and, pressing your fingertips into watercolors, paint all over and around your tree shape with the paint.
3. When finished, remove the tree to reveal your painting.

Button Pictures

This is one of the fun crafts that he did with his Meme and Papa this last week. He loved being able to fill the Christmas shapes they drew with different colored buttons. We can now either leave them as is or cut out each shape and hang them in the house.

Supplies

• Construction paper
• Buttons
• Crayon
• Glue stick

Instructions

1. Draw shapes that you want to fill in, like a wreath, a stocking, and a Christmas tree.
2. Glue buttons onto each one to fill in the shape. Be creative with how you decorate them.

Paper Plate Star of David

This was another craft that my son did with his grandparents this week. They had fun coloring the popsicle sticks and decorating with glitter. I think this was the very first time my son has ever used glitter, and let me tell you, I even have glitter all over me now and I didn’t even participate in the craft. haha

Supplies

• Paper Plate
• Popsicle sticks
• Markers
• Glitter
• Glue stick

Instructions

1. Use the markers to color the popsicle sticks.
2. Glue the six popsicle sticks into two triangles and then glue one on top of the other onto the paper plate.
3. Spread glue onto the plate and sprinkle with glitter.

Chalk Lights

There are so many more Christmas crafts we have to do and likely will over the next week, and this is one on our list. Isn’t this adorable. This creative use of chalk, which my little one loves as well, makes all of the Christmas lights look like their shining. But be sure to spray them with hairspray afterward or you’ll have chalk everywhere.

Supplies

• Black paper
• Chalk
• White paper
• Scissors
• Hairspray

Instructions

1. On your black paper, trace out the light string and the screw part of each bulb with chalk.
2. On a separate sheet of paper, cut out one bulb shape.
3. Place this bulb paper shape under each screw on your black paper and trace around it with one color of chalk, flaring out the chalk around the shape. Bump the shape over and use another piece of chalk until you have all of your colorful bulbs.
4. I do not like or use hairspray, but it’s great for keeping the chalk on a piece of paper where you put it. I highly suggest spraying it outside and then letting it dry completely before bringing it in.

Popsicle Stick Christmas Tree Ornaments

Although we made a bunch of our own homemade Christmas ornaments at the beginning of the season, we decided that we simply couldn’t have enough. Thankfully these cuties can be displayed just about anywhere in your home, including on a ribbon to hang across the fireplace or across the front of a window.

Supplies

• Popsicle sticks
• Watercolors
• Pipe cleaners
• Bells
• Pom poms
• Glue Stick
• String
• White paper
• Scissors

Instructions

1. This is one of those cute crafts where you and your kids can get really creative. Technically each of the popsicle stick trees can be painted differently.
2. Then you could decorate them with the pipe cleaners, bells, and pom poms as you desire.
3. To get the star at the top, we usually just paint a piece of white paper and cut out the stars.
4. To finish, paint little tree trunks on the white paper and glue the string to the top.

Yarn Christmas Trees

These super sweet trees would look adorable on your mantle, or spread around your house to adorn a countertop somewhere. You could even attach a string and put them on the Christmas tree as ornaments. Either way, they are super simple to pull together!

Supplies

• Cardboard
• Scissors
• Yarn
• Pom poms
• Glue stick

Instructions

1. Cut triangle shapes out of some cardboard.
2. Wrap them with your chosen yarn, being sure to glue each end down.
3. Decorate each tree by gluing on pom poms.

Cotton Ball Snow Globes

I’m sure this crafty mom used colored paper to make her snow globes, but we typically just use white paper painted with watercolors. I really like the way our crafts turn out using the watercolors, and then each one ends up unique as well.

Supplies

• White paper
• Watercolors
• Scissors
• Cotton balls
• Glue stick

Instructions

1. Start by cutting out the shapes you need for the globe and base of your snow globe, and the shapes for the trees out of your white paper.
2. Then paint each shape with the colors you would like for each item. The picture above is a good reference.
3. When dry, glue each piece together with the trees on top of the globe.
4. Finally, glue on your cotton balls to look like snow is coming down.

It’s never a bad time to do crafts with your kids. Whether you caught this article before Christmas and can show off your child’s creations to family when they visit for the holiday, or even if it’s afterward and you just spend some quality time with your kids doing some fun crafts to cherish later when they are older.

Like I said before, I think most of my son’s joy in putting together crafts is the quality time that he gets with the person who sits down with him to put them together. He really likes the one-on-one attention this activity gets him. Although, he is a very creative soul, even at 4 years old, and loves creating and building things just as much.

I truly can’t wait to find these precious treasures in 10 or 15 years when he’s older, and possibly out of the house, and remember all of the time we spent together when he was still small. Not only are these adorable decorations that your kids will love seeing around the house during the holidays, but they are memories in the making. I hope you enjoy them as much as we have!

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