Holiday Activities

December 18, 2018 /

We’ve been working up a storm over here getting ready for and learning about the Holidays! I’ve had a lot of fun with the kids doing some crafting and some play and these are just a few of our favorites!

Felt Christmas Tree

This was a great activity for my kids to keep them busy and away from our real tree (which is still standing with all ornaments intact thank you very much!) They had their own ornaments to play with and could decorate and undecorated their tree as many times as they liked! The felt just sticks to itself when they push down which makes it a perfect task for little hands! 

To make it I just grabbed one big piece of green felt and cut it into the christmas tree shape. I cut the candy canes out of white felt and used a red sharpie to make the lines and then cut all the ornaments out of a few different colors. I stuck with round and oval shapes for the ornaments but if you wanted to take it a step further you could try to make ornaments similar to ones you have or do specialized ornaments by writing each child’s name on it. We even did a couple strands of lights by using a small strip of black felt with some glued on little light bulb shapes in various colors. Just make sure to make the ornaments big enough not to be swallowed if you’ve got very little ones in the house.

Pom-Pom Christmas Tree

This was another fun one-time craft that we did with construction paper and some glittery pompoms! I cut out the christmas trees and gave each kiddo a plate with some glue and a pile of pompoms – with some modeling they were able to dip them in the glue and then stick them to their trees! Another fun project that you could turn into decorations or even into Christmas cards!

Wrapping Paper

Speaking of Christmas cards there is nothing cuter (and cheaper) than having your kids make the wrapping paper for any presents they are giving out! This was a project we did over a couple days but depending on your kids attention span or ability you may get more or less out of it.  I unrolled a big sheet of paper handed out red and green paint, dot art, markers and crayons and let them go to town (we switched to blue and silver for our Hanukah presents). Occasionally they’d ask me to join in so I’d make a “present” or a square for them to decorate on the paper. I also did a couple of swirls to see if they could follow along with their dot stampers. They had a lot of fun with this and we turned it around a few times so that each section had some artwork from each kid! We then used this to wrap presents for Dad, Grandparents, babysitters etc. It was so much more meaningful having something special made by the kids to open and seemed much less wasteful than wrapping paper that is quickly used and thrown away. 

Wrapping Paper Trees

In an effort to reuse some of our wrapping paper scraps we also made wrapping paper trees – to do this we used our kid safe scissors and practiced cutting strips of wrapping paper. This was a real challenge for my little ones – great fine motor practice though. When we were all scissored out we tried some ripping and  I helped cut a few extra strips too. We then glued these onto paper to make little christmas trees! 

Holiday Small World

This was our first small world and the kids have just loved it! They ask me to take it down and play multiple times a day – and it was SO easy to set up! I threw some craft stuffing down as the snow – threw in a few cotton balls for snow balls and a couple of christmas character (rudolph) finger puppets. I even put in a little christmas tree coaster we had as their christmas tree. It’s been such a hit of them hiding & digging characters out of the snow and even some pretend play with the characters talking to each other or their siblings! So much fun! I’m definitely going to be doing more of these in the future but this was a great little winter wonderland for them to enjoy as we got ready for Christmas.

Salt Dough Ornaments

This was another great activity (and gift idea) to do with my kids! It’s very similar to homemade playdoh – we used about a cup of flour, 1/2 cup of salt, 4-5 drops of green food coloring and a 1/2 cup of water. It’s technically taste safe if you’ve got a mouther (my kids gave it a few licks before deciding it was gross) though not an appealing or edible snack. We played with it and used some of our cookie cutters to make some fun ornaments. Once they were done with a piece I put it on a baking sheet and used a straw to make a hole to hang it from then baked it for about an hour and a half until it was dry.  After nap they were able to paint/decorate them and once all that was dry I added the ribbon. I think they came out great and can’t wait to hang them on our tree. We even did a few little hand prints to give to some special people in our lives! 

Christmas Coloring Books

A great take along for all those holiday parties, dinner and traveling. These were super simple to make just printed a christmas tree from clipart and then used it as a guideline to cut trees out of construction paper and our scrap paper. I put construction paper on the front and back and scrap paper in the middle stapled the top and added each kids initial! That’s it! Christmas themed coloring books that could fit in my purse along with a little pack of crayons and keep them entertained wherever we went.

Holiday Sensory Table

Every year as it gets cold out I clean and bring in our water table to transform into our seasonal sensory tables! For the fall we’ve got leaves and little rakes (add in some spiders for Halloween), but for Christmas I did it up with snowballs, squisy santas, little stockings and christmas figures i found at the dollar store. This has been a great addition to our play space that they’ve been coming back to all month long. It’s an easy way to get them engaged in something else if they need a break from some activity that’s gone amok too. Plus just having their own little set of ornaments has been a life saver as I can remind them to get one of theirs if they are interested in the ones on the tree! 

Christmas Cards

A few examples of Christmas Card designs.

Kind of an obvious one, but who doesn’t love getting a homemade card from one of their favorite little people? My kids love to sing Happy Birthday and make cards each time someones birthday rolls around so this was right up their alley! These can be as simple as a little marker and crayons – but we decided to make ours a little special and used some bubble wrap that arrived with one of our packages to paint cool designs on christmas trees. We then glued the trees to cards – did some painting on the inside and added special messages to each person where Mommy wrote whatever they wanted to say to them! I think they came out lovely and the kids liked having something of their own to give out!

Repurposing and Reusing Infant Toys
Our Christmas List

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