Christmas crafts for toddlers

[Mallowmarshmallow]

I'd love to have a day at my house with friends and our three year olds.

We did similar last year and painted around masking tape snowflakes on canvases.

Does anyone have any tried and tested crafts our three year olds might enjoy?

Potato prints! Cut Christmas shapes into the cut surface of half a potato, and cut away the potato edges so that the design stands proud. Think snowman, Christmas tree, bell, star and so on. The DC can print onto contrasting paper and the shapes can be cut out to thread onto string or ribbon for bunting. Or they can print directly onto folded paper for Christmas cards. We did snowmen and trees for GP's cards and when they were dry could be decorated with sequins and other stick on bits, snowmen had felt scarves and hats for example. The DC do need to be closely supervised. It helps to saturate a pad of folded kitchen paper with the paint, so that you only get as much paint as needed on the potato when pressed onto it.

Paper chains from strips of wrapping paper. The coloured foil type is good, or totally contrasting bright colours. You will need to cut the strips beforehand. Again close supervision, to help them bend the strip into a loop and apply the sticky tape, also to thread another strip through the loop and so on to make a chain.

Salt dough hands to make into Father Christmas and Christmas trees
Foot print robins or mistletoe for cards / calendars
Decorate a ginger bread house?
Make pom-poms and then get them to stick bits on to make them into snowmen to hand from the tree
Cut out felt shapes of stockings and they can decorate them

We did crafts most days last year and the favourite was making snow baubles for the tree. We got the empty clear plastic baubles you can get in packs of 4 at the poundshop, white tack, an old piece of aeroboard packaging and some of his favourite toy figures (Busy Book figures are perfect). We opened the baubles and fixed the figures in with the white tack. DS shredded the aeroboard into snow and then we partially filled the baubles with it. Then fixed them back together and hung them on the tree.

These Paw Patrol ones were the most loved. Next year we're going to make play-dough santa hats for them before we put them in.

There are some great ideas on pinterest...

terracotta air dry clay and a gingerbread man cutter. put a hole through it's head, leave to dry out.. add ribbon - tree decorations!

salt dough and cookie cutters, decorate when cooked with glitter.

Look up paper plate Christmas craft ideas on Pinterest, endless things on there and you can buy a pack of paper plates very cheaply.

These are fab! And make excellent Christmas presents!
www.redtedart.com/2012/12/05/gingerbread-house-ideas/

Oh I love the mini gingerbread houses, I think I will steal that for the school fair. Thanks!

Salt dough is always a winner here as is decorating cheap baubles

Some great ideas here! I love the mini Gingerbread houses. Decorating biscuits always goes down well here.

Keeping with the edible theme, you could make wee bags of reindeer food (porridge oats and edible glitter), tied up with festive ribbon and put a rhyme in to be read out as they scatter it on Christmas Eve. If you use paper bags they could also decorate the bags.

Are you looking for gift ideas or on-the-day amusement? We did handprints on cotton shopping bags last year. Got a dozen cotton bags, some fabric paints and some paper plates. The kids loved doing them and they seemed to go down well as presents. Handprints on flower pots with a bulb planted in them also look like a nice idea but you'd have to do them earlier.

They could make their own Santa beards with white felt or cotton wool....

I'm quite excited about this now. Jingle all the way!