What Christmas crafts are you doing with your mindees?

[mogs0]

I need to crack on with some Christmas crafts towards the end of this week. Most of my mindees are term-time only so only have 2 weeks left before the holidays.

I have 7 children aged 1 to 9years.

While the 2 x 9yr olds were home last Wednesday, we started a papier mâché snowman and it was a very labour intensive activity which they both lost interest in before we'd applied enough layers so I ended up finishing it off .

I'm looking for ideas which will be a bit easier and less messy. Also, ideas that can be adapted slightly for the younger ones.

Any suggestions appreciated.

Handprints of reindeer/santa/angels
Permanant pen on ceramic plates
Biscuits
Wrapping paper - brown paper roll with choice of art materials = pens/paint
Paper chains
Salt dough decorations
Christmas cards

we've made the Xmas cake already - I'll marzipan and plain ice it, then slice into 4, paint the top with a bit of white icing and the children can decorate their quarter to take home

I'm going to make mincemeat with them delia's recipe, dead easy and pot into saved jam jars to take home

we've done spin painting, the card cut into stars, punched and hanging ribbon tied on

the tinies did spaghetti painting, I'll use theirs as card fronts for their families' cards

feet and hand prints of the tinies with those tear off calendars

paper chains for the older ones, I got ones that you peel off about an inch of backing and the strips are pre-glued

We made a large xmas tree with green painted handprints,the children decorated the tree and you could put a photo of each of your mindees on it.I also cut out stars from card ,made a slit in one end and slotted them together the children are going to decorate them and hang them up.I use loo rolls to make angels, with doilies for wings, a polystyrene ball for the head we had yellow wool for hair,drew on a face and lots of glitter,On ebay you can get heart shaped doilies which were great for wings you just stick them on the back.Are childminders able to use loo rolls,you could roll up some card.We also varied this and made penguins,you need a piece of card on the bottem to help them stand up.Lots of cotton wool on a large cut out card snowman shape add eyes and nose,buttons hat and scarf.

I read that as 'dollies as wings' and I was at what sort of scary arse angels are on your xmas tree!

We've done/are going to do; snowflakes, xmas chains, we did stained glass window type things (perm pens on the pastic sheet you get on front of pizza box), paint your own xmas decorations set, cards (potato prints and sticking on pics cut out from last years cards), angel made from paper cone with childs face stuck on, decorate a snowman, xmas tree magnets (foam xmas tree, decorate, stick on bit of that adhesive magent stuff)

Stuck shiney stuff on paper Christmas trees last week (sent home with the suggestion to make them into Christmas cards for grandparents). Glittery sticky stars yesterday. My house will soon be lovely and sparkly :)

We made some paper chains to decorate the playroom, christmas cards, salt dough decorations, pictures to make into calendars as presents for the parents and christmas angels.

This week we are doing a hand print christmas tree, reindeer pictures and more salt dough (lots of different ad hoc mindees and part timers who've been on holidays!)

Tempted to do salt dough tomorrow ...

Salt dough made. Little balls in different colours, to save painting :). The children will be well impressed this afternoon.

whatever is done I think its important theat the kids actually do it themselves. Always made me hoot when mine were at playgroup as it was bloody obvious that the fancy decorations I was given with my kids names on bore little resemblance to the usual crap they produced at home.

Thanks for the suggestions.

I have a rather large number of green buttons from another craft project so the older mindees stuck some onto black paper in the shape of a Christmas tree (except mindee aged 3 who made a random pattern ).

I'm still deciding what to do with the smaller mindees. It'll probably involve paint and handprints.

Our recent attempts at salt dough decorations didn't turn out well - they puffed out when I cooked them but I think we'll have another go.

Any other ideas for 1 and 2 yr olds?

We've done wreaths made out of hand-shaped cut outs (from Tesco magazine, something useful in there at last!), angels made of paper plates and doilies (they coloured in the plates and put stickers on them, I put them together) and yesterday we made cards using hand-shaped cut outs of brown foam as reindeer, stuck onto white card - saw them on Pinterest :)

Mindees are 13mo, 19mo and DD is 21mo, so they can't do a huge amount without destroying the house, or the craft materials - stickers are my friend!

Thebody you are so right about them doing it themselves. I got some sideways glances from a couple of parents when their child had made 1 perfect star and several rather unusual ones :) . Today we had salt dough angels and their accompanying 'shapes'.

yep, wonky and misshapen, love it

exactly and that crap is fondly displayed year after year by us parents. thats christmas..

Air drying clay is my best friend, made decorations ans hand prints its great

i have a20 month old i bought some cheap baubles and let her cover it in glue and put glitter and shiny bits on then she pulled the shiny bits off!!!!she had loads of fun and then took it home

We made our own Christmas crackers out of empty loo roll inners. We made paper hats, and wrote a joke and put a small sweet inside each of them and wrapped in Christmas wrapping paper and tied at the ends. We also made some Christmas wreaths - we cut out the middle of a paper plate and then wrapped tinsel around it (very easy!) We've also done finger paintings and sprinkled salt over the top as when it dries it leaves a 'snowy' effect. Another good one is to buy some cheap plain baubles, cover in glue then roll round in glitter to make ultra sparkly tree decorations.

Have fun!

Sent all the salt dough angels etc home on Monday and suddenly had a horrible thought and had to send out a quick email to say they were not edible.