Christmas crafts for children

Christmas is the time of year when it's quite OK to get out all the tacky, home-made, crappy crafts and put them on public display. And making crafts will hopefully keep little hands busy while you're trying to get everything else ready for Christmas festivities. Try these...

Christmas Placemats
Get the kids to make Christmas-themed placemats for the table - practical and fun, this will help keep the tablecloth from getting stained. First, they need to cut out pictures from old Christmas cards, wrapping paper, catalogues or magazines with Christmas pictures. Glue the pictures onto an A4 sheet of cardstock, and add their own drawings to decorate - use bright crayons or textas, and glitter glue or shiny stickers. Then cover with clear Contact or laminate (if you have a home laminator) to seal it.

Eco-friendly Christmas Tree
This is what I'll be doing this year instead of putting up a plastic tree, or cutting down a real tree. Thanks to the mums at Intuitive Parenting forums for the idea. Cut a large tree shape out of cardboard - I'll be using a big cardboard box from stock arriving at the shop, but you could get big boxes at the recycling centre or ask at the supermarket for used boxes. Get the kids to paint the tree-shape green. Then get them to make decorations by decorating round ball, bell, and other Christmassy shapes cut out of white card. Use bright crayons or textas, glitter glue, and little bits of tinsel to make the decorations stand out. Get the kids to glue or blu-tak the decorations onto the tree, and add some tinsel fastened with double-sided scrapbooking tape or blu-tak. This tree takes up less space than a large, round tree, can be recycled (except the tinsel and blu-tak) if it's looking too tired to go another year, and safer than a real tree with breakable decorations around my toddler. I'll be hanging the real decorations from tinsel garlands over the doorways, so we can still enjoy them without being in reach of little hands.

Peg Decorations
Use Christmas biscuit cutters to cut shapes out of coloured felt, or trace the biscuit cutter shape onto coloured paper and cut out. Get the kids to decorate by gluing on bits of ribbon, glitter glue, and white cotton wool for snow or white hair. If you have an angel shaped cutter, cut out a little photo of your child's face to glue on. Glue the decorated shapes onto clothes pegs to attach to the Christmas tree, or peg onto a tinsel garland to hang over the doorway.

Lolly Pots or Planters
If you have some small plastic seedling pots, wash them out and get the kids to decorate them. Plastic pots are easiest to decorate if an adult first wraps them in white paper, so you can use texta or crayon and ordinary paper paste to stick things on. Fill the decorated pots with home-made biscuits wrapped in clear cellophane, brightly coloured lollies, or plant a seedling to give to someone special for Christmas.

Advent Calendar
This is great for kids who like to count down the 24 sleeps from the start of December until Christmas Day. You'll need 24 empty matchboxes or 24 small calico drawstring bags (try a craft or fabric store and look in the party favours or bonbonniere area). A bag the size that I use for soap nuts, or that you would get at a wedding with sugared almonds in it, is perfect. Paint the matchboxes white with poster paint, then get the kids to write the numbers 1 to 24 on the boxes and decorate with textas, crayons, and glitter. If using calico bags, use fabric textas (from a craft shop) to decorate the bags. Glue the matchboxes onto a large square of thick cardboard - an old cardboard box is perfect, painted with poster paint to make it look nice. This last bit needs to be done without the kids around to see - inside each box, put a small treat, a picture showing something Christmas-themed from another country, or the name and photo of someone the child knows. Each day, the child will get a special treat, an opportunity to learn about Christmas in other cultures, or they can make a Christmas card to send to someone special.