Tips for Making Christmas Cookies with Kids

Making Christmas cookies with kids can be one of the most fun activities of the entire holiday season. Kids love to make Christmas cookies, and a day filled with baking and decorating Christmas cookies will create memories that kids will cherish for a long time. Making Christmas cookies, as with any activity involving kids, can be a much more pleasant experience with a little careful planning. If you'll be making Christmas cookies with kids this holiday season, consider these tips.

Be as organized and prepared as possible before you begin. Although spontaneous cookie-baking days can be a lot of fun, you will avoid the common downfalls of a day spent making Christmas cookies with kids if you plan ahead. Decide ahead of time which day you are setting aside for making Christmas cookies. This activity typically takes several hours, particularly if you have a lot of cookies to make and are making them from scratch. Consider making the dough the night before, and chilling it overnight. This way, your dough is really easy to work with, and will be ready to go by the time the kids are ready to decorate. Kids get so excited about making Christmas cookies, and making them wait several hours while the dough is mixed and then chilled, can leave you with some very riled up kids on your hands who ask you every 30 seconds if it's time to put on the sprinkles yet. Although cute, this scenario does get tiresome after a while. The easiest way to start a Christmas cookie-making session with kids is to let them sit at a table with pre-cut, unbaked cookies on cookie sheets, decorations ready to go.

Explain a few decorating tips to the kids before they begin. When my children were very small, they had a tendency to push chocolate chips entirely through the raw, pre-cut cookies while decorating. A few kind words and a short demonstration of how not to kill the cookies was all it took to get a few laughs, and to stop the kids from mutilating the cookies before they ever made it into the oven. Additionally, my youngest children still need reminders each time we make Christmas cookies that the cookies taste better when each one is not serving as the foundation to a 2 inch high mound of colored sugar.

Keep the kids' hands clean. If the Christmas cookies you are making with your kids are going to be distributed among extended family, friends, or co-workers, be sure to be diligent about keeping your kids' hands clean while they are decorating them. If little fingers have been to the bathroom, helped the child take off their dirty shoes, or graced the interior of a nostril, be sure to have the kids wash their hands with warm, soapy water before touching any more of the ingredients.

Making Christmas cookies with kids is a wonderful way to enhance the holiday season with your family. Don't forget to take the time to snap a few photos! You'll want to look back on your photographs and remember these happy memories for years to come.