angathome

In December we finish up our normal school routine and get right into the Christmas spirit. Along with our daily Jesse tree readings, traditions we are continuing from past years and special outings, I like to prepare a stack of craft activities ahead of time.

I find my ideas, (Pinterest is an awesome source for this) do all the prep needed for 6 children to make one each and place everything into large paper bags. When we want to do a craft I simply plop the bag on the table with nothing to do other than gather some glue, textas or other basic items that we are using every day and can’t be assigned to a single bag. In the past, the children didn’t know what was in each bag but this time I will be attaching a photo to the front so that I can decide which one I can cope with at the time. Some are much more involved than others.

I would love to post photos here, but as they are other people’s ideas you will need to follow the links to see them or have a look at my Pinterest Christmas board where there is a pinned picture for almost all of the crafts, plus quite a few more! I also prepared some simple colouring pages with stickers for the younger children to work on while the older ones are doing the more difficult crafts or pre-prepared crafts ahead with only the decorating left for the little ones so they feel like they made it themselves. Three older children wielding hot glue guns at once means I am not always able to supervise the little ones at the same time! Oh, and if you don’t own a glue gun now is the time to invest. I just got 2 more for $7 each and they are awesome. Don’t try to craft without one! Trust me; I was sure I didn’t need one for quite a while but once you have one there is no going back!

1. Paper strip Christmas tree for Jesse tree
2. Christmas activity books for quiet times. Most of the pages for these came from here (scroll down) here (scroll down to Christmas) and here (type nativity and Christmas into the search bar for heaps of results.)
3. Electric tea-light covers – cone shaped Christmas trees. Inspired by a picture that turned out to be papier-mache with holes drilled in and sanded off. Far too much work I say! I am tracing a cone template onto glittered card stock and using a hole punch plus a scrapbooking tool to punch a variety of hole sizes to let the light through.
4. Paper chains. No explanation needed here! The children plan to make enough to go around the entire house. Needless to say, I cut my own strips rather than purchasing prepared ones.
5. Clove decorated oranges. Some beautiful examples here and here. Use a zester that makes strips of peel for the patterns before adding cloves.
6. Wooden dolly peg Mary Joseph and Jesus
7. Giant popstick snowflake decorations. We hung these outside our front door last year. Must have a hot glue gun to make drying fast or lots of patience with white glue.
8. Ribbon Christmas tree card
9.  Jewel decorated line drawing Christmas trees. I have bought sticky jewels so this will be very simple. A quick drawing following the style of the example and some jewels on the branches for baubles.
10. Felt Christmas tree with decorations All the children will cut out decorations for the large felt tree backing which will then be left out for them to play with and redecorate as they wish.
11. Delicate string Christmas trees I have pre-made the cardboard cones and covered them with plastic kitchen wrap. Paint the plastic covered cones with white glue and wrap with string. Ensure that the strings cross over each other for a strong result. Once well-covered, paint over the top of the string with white glue and allow to dry thoroughly overnight before removing the cone and plastic carefully from underneath.
12. Natural branch Christmas trees We will have to go on a nature walk to collect sticks for this.
13. Sequin decorated foam baubles I have a variety of plain, flower and star sequins for this activity. I purchased a packet of shirt pins with tiny coloured round ball ends but any pin with an end that won’t pull through the sequins will do.
14. Pasta noodle angel choir These are so cute. We will experiment with different facial features. I can see a whole village developing!
15. Split pin and string Christmas tree cards This wall sized version gave me the idea but I shrunk it and used split pins to make the outline of a Christmas tree on the front of a card. The children will wind glitter string back and forth. The split pins need to be placed into the card loosely so there is enough room underneath then to fit several turns of string.
16. Popstick stable and silhouettes I copied the silhouettes into Word and chose format picture – adjust picture, black and white 75% to get a strong black and white silhouette to cut out. Hot glue gun popsticks or coffee stirrers {same thing but cheaper because they are not a craft supply!} together to make the stables and add some card backing with sticker stars.  I am going to show the older children the example and let them go nuts creating their own stables. May turn into mansions…. we’ll see!
17. Variety of nativity scene colouring pages. (Search google images for nativity colouring pages, they are everywhere.)
18. Bauble Christmas cards An easy card requiring nothing but a little patterned paper and ribbon.
19. Strings of fingerprinted Christmas lights Controlled finger-painting experience! Could use ink stamp pads rather than paint or even bingo dotter markers.
20. Wooden peg stars These look very effective. We added glitter last year and made some beautiful ornaments. Even the natural wood alone is pretty.
21. Popstick tree Last year I bought some foam popsticks which we will use instead of wood because they can be easily cut with scissors to make the various sizes required for this tree.
22. 3 wise men popsicle ornament Oversized popsticks (or paint stirrers) are used for these with a couple of scraps to decorate. We will use felt off-cuts for beards and dot stickers for the faces rather than painting the popsicle sticks.)
23. Paper strip flower decoration A good use for left over paper chain strips – if there are any!
24. toilet roll flower wreath Collecting lots of toilet rolls in a household of 8 is never a problem 😉 These do look very pretty and are so easy to make – IF you have a hot glue gun. Get one!!
25. Jesus in a toilet roll manger We will wrapping felt pieces around a wooden dolly peg for Jesus and laying him in the toilet roll mangers filled with shredded gold tinsel. (Upmarket hay for our baby Jesus!)

 What crafts are you doing this Christmas?

Other posts you may find helpful:

Mummy’s Christmas shop – how to organise gift giving with lots of siblings

Receiving gifts, thankfulness and good manners

Christmas “to do” list; making sure those traditions happen

Filed under: Celebrations, events & festivals (Christmas, birthdays etc.) | Tagged: advent, Christian Christmas, christmas crafts for children, Christmas gifts, Christmas traditions, December count-down, Jesus, nativity crafts, simple crafts for kids | Leave a comment »