Christmas Crafts for Children

For those who want to spend some quality time with your kids making Christmas crafts, ornaments, and decorations this article is for you. You'll find five inexpensive and easy crafts. Most of these Christmas crafts can be made by your children using things you have around the house.

Hopefully, this article will broaden your imagination and encourage you to think of original crafts of your own. The joy of doing Christmas crafts with children is the joy they find in the craft or project and the time spent together.

Beautiful Pine Cone Decoration Crafts

This craft may be considered old-fashioned, but it is low cost and involves several steps, including collecting pine cones which gets the kids outside.

Collect a variety of sizes of pinecones. Symmetrical cones work beautifully, but any pine cone you and your child find will work fine for this craft.

Make sure the pine cones are free of pine straw, leaves, and other debris.

The easiest way to paint pine cones is to use a can of $1.00 acrylic spray paint. Spray paint offers thorough coverage and dries quickly.

For sparkling pine cone ornaments add glitter one of three ways. Paint the individual pine cone "leaves" with clear drying glue and sprinkle the cone liberally with glitter. An easier method is to use spray adhesive.

Alternately, you may choose to paint the leaves with glitter glue. Sprinkle on extra glue to enhance the sparkle. If you want a few pinecone Christmas ornaments with less sparkle use only the glitter glue.

You can also sprinkle glitter as you paint the cones. In most cases it will stick to the wet paint. The problem with this method is that the fumes from spray paint are very strong and you should not have your child around them.

If you want to paint the cones with your children use tempera paint. It's water soluble. Once the pine cones are painted add glittered as suggested above.

Sparkling pinecone crafts look great adorning your Christmas tree as handmade ornaments, or piled in a basket sitting on the fireplace, or beneath the tree.

More Advanced Pine Cone Decoration Crafts

Gather and paint pine cones with your children as described above. Use glitter if you like, but also add pearl beads or other baubles to the "leaves" to make fancy pinecones. You may also add small ribbons or bows. This is a beautiful way to decorate large cones. Larger pinecone crafts stand out anyway, you may as well decorate them in a way that is worthy of the attention.

Easy Christmas Bell Craft

This is a great craft for large groups of children. It requires only a few supplies and is easy to make.

Gather a collection of clean, dry yogurt cups. Drill a small hole In the bottom of each cup.

Allow kids to paint the cups, using tempera paint.

Have the children run a string, slightly smaller than the diameter of the drilled hole, through the yogurt cup.

Provide a small jingle bell, which can be purchased at a dollar store at approximately $1 per dozen. Tie the jingle bell to the bottom of the string.

Tie a hanger back through the drilled hole.

Quickly, cheaply, and easily the kids will have created a Christmas bell to hang on their Christmas tree.

Easy Paper Plate Christmas Wreath Craft

A paper plate wreath craft another very easy Christmas craft that works well for groups of children or one-on-one with your own child.

Supply a paper plate for each child. Depending on the age of the children with whom you are working on the Christmas craft you may need to cut out the center ahead of time.

There are a number of ways to turn the paper plate rim into a Christmas wreath.

Use small one inch squares of green tissue paper to cover the plate rim in green.

Paint the rim of the plate green with tempera paint.

Use holly leaves, pre-cut or dye-cut, from green construction paper.

Inexpensive green tinsel covers the edge of the plate with lots of festive color.

Once the wreath is green choose how to accessorize the wreath.

Paint acorns red and glue them to your wreath.

Glue inexpensive jingle bells to the Christmas craft.

Small craft pom-poms will also finish off your Christmas wreath craft.

Tie a ribbon to the bottom of your wreath for a finishing touch.

Glue a soda can tab to the back from which you can hang the Christmas wreath craft.

Snowman Craft Ornament

Short on time and attention spans? This is a quick, easy, and very cute Christmas ornament that will last for years. It is a snowman Christmas craft ornament made out of a used light bulb. I recommend this craft for kids who are old enough and responsible enough to work with a light bulb without breaking it.

It doesn't take a lot of work to turn an ordinary light bulb into a snowman.

Turn the light bulb upside down and paint eyes, a carrot nose, and dots of coal for a mouth. Wrap a pipe cleaner or piece of ribbon around the bottom of the bulb, which is now the top of the snowman.

Attach a hanger to the scarf to hang your Christmas snowman craft on the Christmas tree.