Christmas crafts for children are all over the place. You can make an expensive Christmas craft for kids with many elaborate store bought materials which often mean that they are going to be typical copycat ones, or you can stick with me and make cheap, simple, developmentally appropriate crafts, in this case ornaments.
What I like to do when I am looking for preschool Christmas crafts is at is look though the web through many of the traditional copycat websites and find crafts that I can modify to fit into the educational art framework.
I came up with three real easy, inexpensive Christmas art projects that are actually ornaments. Some of them are good for Christmas crafts for toddlers as they are capable of very little and these are REAL easy. They can be made by the children and hung on their trees.
I have 3 images above showing me actually making the crafts. The first one as seen above are glue squigglies.
You take a bottle of glue and on a non sticky surface like wax paper or even aluminum foil, you make some designs with the glue.
You need to make sure that the glue bottle is not old and dried out and that the glue comes out in a nice clear stream. Otherwise it can be very frustrating. Hold the bottle up high and move it around to make some designs on either the parchment paper or the aluminum foil.
When the children make the designs make sure the squiggles are not too skinny as they will be hard to work with them when dry.
After you have done a few of them you can leave them to dry for the next day.
When they are all dry you gently peel the glue squigglies off of their backing and hold it up. Then when you see that it is still whole, you make a tiny hole in the end. You can do this with a needle or an awl. Make sure you do this to all of them. Then thread a needle and thread a few of them together through a piece of yarn or pretty ribbon and hang them on your tree.
If you’d like you can decorate them with glitter (if you don’t mind glitter in the kids hair and under their nails)or you can use glitter pens which have the same shine as glitter without the same problems that glitter has. If you want to glue squiggles to be colorful then you can add a bit of paint or food coloring to the glue before you squeeze it out. It could be that they also sell colored glue, I know they sell the stuff with the glitter in it, so you may want to try that kind as well.
The second Christmas craft idea for children
The second craft would be to find any old cd’s you have lying around your house. If you don’t have any then you can can even buy a batch of new ones for this as they are very inexpensive.
The cd’s can be used to allow the children to decorate these in so many different ways. This is really cool for the kids because as they are not the finest handmade Christmas crafts they are are homemade Christmas. Kids also love being able to use materials that are usually off limits for a crafts projects. It is important to let the children know that these are only for this project and that they cannot deface any old cd.
The cd’s can e decorated with tissue paper. They can be colored on with markers. They can be collaged on with sequins and other shiny materials. They can be painted and they can also be sewn with different colors of yarn. the children themselves can think of other ways to decorate these versatile cd’s., and have the children come up with different ways to decorate these.
After they are done and dry, string them and hang them they are really fun and add lots of opportunities for the kids to come up with ideas how to embellish these cd’s.
The third and easiest kids Christmas crafts ornament
This last idea is another one that allows kids to work with a material that is usually used in daily living. This one used plastic cups. Even as an adult I love to color on cups and kids are no different. This way they get to use permanent markers which won’t make many Moms too happy I know. Even though permanent markers are usually a no-no if you have lots of supervision and a smock then it is doable just this time.Regular, washable markers markers just won’t work on plastic.
After the kids completely cover them with any designs they like you just bake them.
That’s right you heard(read) correctly. Put them on a cookie sheet and put them in the oven on about 350 degrees Leave them in only a few minutes until they are melted about halfway down.
Remove from the oven and let cool. Don’t let the kids near these until they are cool as they get real hot.
Punch holes in the bottom of the cups, string some pretty ribbon through them and voila! You can’t find more homemade Christmas ornaments than these.
It took me a few times to get the baking times right. One time I completely ruined the cups and others didn’t bake them enough. you will have to figure this out through trial and error. This is also probably an activity more for the home than for a Christmas craft for kindergarten
Related posts:
- How do you make clay at home or in the kindergarten or preschool classroom
- Collage Ideas: Sophisticated collages for kindergarten, preschool and all young children
- Paper mache ideas for kids: Simple, good, beginning papier mache that can be done at home or in the classroom
- Clay modelling for kids: Clay projects for kids including clay sculpture ideas and how to make clay beads
- Back to School Arts and Crafts Idea/ A mixed media project
