Children enjoy the holiday season and love to be creative. You can involve the whole family in making Christmas crafts, and the time spent together making them is often remembered longer than the presents.
Why Christmas crafts are different
There is a real purpose to them, and children respond to that.
A decoration goes on the tree. A card gets posted to a grandparent. A present gets wrapped and given. That is different from a craft activity done to fill an afternoon.
And they come back. A decoration made this year comes out next year and the year after, and the child remembers making it. Very few children’s crafts have that kind of life.
Tree decorations
Salt dough shapes. Flour, salt and water, rolled, cut with shape cutters, a hole made for the ribbon, baked slowly until hard, then painted.
Make the hole before baking. This is the step everyone forgets and it cannot be fixed afterwards.
Write the year on the back. In twenty years that is the part that matters.
Paper chains, which children never tire of.
Pom-poms, almost impossible to get wrong.
Cinnamon and dried orange slices, which smell wonderful and cost almost nothing.
Cards
Still among the best. Folded card and whatever is to hand.
Shapes cut from paper and glued produce a better result than drawing, because they come out clean regardless of fine motor control. Fingerprints make holly berries and snowmen; cotton wool makes snow.
Have the child write inside, however illegibly. That is the part the recipient keeps.
Gifts children can make
A decorated candle holder, a photograph in a decorated frame, a jar of homemade biscuits, a bookmark.
The important thing is that it should be recognisably the child’s work rather than an adult’s project they helped with.
Practical points
Start early. December fills up, and paint and glue both need drying time.
Set up somewhere that can get messy, and say so out loud. A child worrying about the table is not making anything.
Prepare everything first. The gap while you find the scissors is where attention goes.
Make several at once, so there is something for everyone and nobody is left out.
Do not improve their work. The wonky one is the point, and grandparents want it.
