DIY cards, gifts: How to keep children occupied through crafts during holiday season

By Rashmi Closepet

Plenty of outdoor activities can keep your children busy during the warm summer days but what about the chilly winter months? Rather than allowing them to spend time in front of the television, why not encourage them to do something creative during the holiday season? Christmas crafts are fun and children love to make anything that resembles Santa, a snowman, a Christmas tree, or a reindeer. With Christmas gifts on their mind, children can also make pretty gift wraps with a little inspiration from their parents.

With Christmas approaching soon, here are some craft ideas children can try during the holiday season. These exciting craft activities are a great way to channelise the energy of your kids towards constructive thinking and creativity.

DIY cards

Opening gifts from Santa, parents, uncles, aunts, and grandparents is one of the favourite activities of all children. Before they open their gifts, encourage them to make handmade cards and thank you notes for everyone ahead of time! Help your kids choose a theme and design to set a guideline if they need it. Let them paint, stamp, stencil, patterns and decorate them with stickers, cords, glitter, and other embellishments. Give them the freedom to use their creativity to come up with unique handmade cards.

Christmas decorative hangings

Who doesn’t love to decorate their Christmas trees? Adorning the tree with hanging decorations keeps kids busy for days. Show them how to make adorable handmade decorations with various materials. They can cut paper or cardboard into trees, baubles, snowflakes and embellish them with glitter, tinsel, sequins, cotton, faux crystals, star, bows, and paints. Older kids can make felt ornaments, snow globes, and various other things. You will be surprised to see what wonderful ideas your little ones can come up with.

Make wreaths

Without Christmas wreaths, the festive decoration is never complete. Keep your children busy by encouraging them to make wreaths with felt, scrunched up coloured paper, pom pom gemstones/crystals, ribbon. Spend time with your children helping them create something beautiful. It is a great way to bond with them during the holiday season and to build their confidence. Use their handmade wreaths to decorate the doors and walls where everyone can see and appreciate them.

Fun paper crafts

Paper is the most easily available material and is simple to work with. Give your children colourful, vintage, printed paper and let them enjoy making Christmas-themed figurines, toys, and decoration pieces. Allow them to cut, paste, glue, and get messy if they want. Having the freedom to express themselves will allow children to open up and express their feelings. To make these all your children will need is paper, faux crystals, ice-cream sticks, googly eyes, chenille sticks, pom poms and some colourful ribbon.

Santa craft

Santa Claus is a favourite among children. Paper plates, red and white pom poms, cotton, and wiggle or googly eyes can be used for making cute Santa faces.

Holiday hats

Why not make some bright red Christmas hats? These hats are super easy to make. Simply make a cone (that fits them) with red glitter paper. Let them glue cotton at the bottom to make the hat look fluffy and dimensional. Stick a lurex pom poms at the top to finish them.

Popsicle stick holiday crafts

Let the kids grab their popsicle sticks and get ready to create some fun holiday crafts. Often called lolly sticks or ice-cream sticks, these wooden sticks are one of the most common kids’ craft accessories. Give your children paints, glue, glitter, faux crystals, beads, etc to enjoy making colourful, fun things that can double up as decorative pieces. Ice-cream stick holiday crafts are suitable for kids of all ages. Toddlers to teens, everyone enjoys playing with these. Let them make star ornaments, snowman and tree and whatever they fancy.

Craft with disposable cups

Paper cup or Styrofoam cup Christmas crafts: Disposable paper or Styrofoam cups are easy to get and they can be used for making interesting Christmas projects. There are endless ways in which your children can use paints, paper, cotton, sticks, buttons and more to create cute DIY festive decorations. Let their imagination fly, encourage them to create some cute figurines, a snowman, reindeer, Christmas tree, Santa, and whatever they can imagine.

Creative paper tube or toilet paper roll crafts

Don’t let those cardboard toiler paper rolls go to waste! Your children can use these paper tubes to create adorable DIY Christmas projects.

Christmas crafts with glass jars

How about putting your empty glass jars to good use? Let your children fill them with coloured glitter that express a Christmassy mood! Some googly eyes, pom pom, and paper cutouts can give a facelift to simple glass jars and turn them into adorable Christmas decorations.

(The author is the co-founder of Itsy Bitsy craft store)