Homemade Christmas crafts to keep the kids busy

As Christmas edges closer, it can be hard to keep the kids’ excitement at bay. Festive crafts are a great way to let them relish in this excitement, and feel like they’re contributing to the big day. From simple baked goods to cute decorations, here are a few ideas to keep little ones entertained.

Gingerbread biscuits

Gingerbread is a classic at Christmas, and kids of all ages can get involved in the fun of making it. Younger ones can help with cutting out the shapes and icing them, while the older ones might be able to manage them with just a little assistance. Decoration can be as extravagant as they like, think edible glitter, sweets, and as many colours of icing as you can fit. Find the recipe for these gingerbread biscuits here.

Salt dough decorations

Another idea that can be as complicated or as simple as you like, salt dough is a great activity to do with kids as you probably have everything you need to make it already: just salt, flour and water. Simple shapes can be cut out, or let them experiment with their own creations. Once they’re dry, paint, glitter and anything else their imaginations conjure up can be used to add finishing touches. Find a recipe for salt dough here.

Christmas crackers

These might be too tricky for young kids, but they could always decorate the finished crackers. Slightly older children can have fun choosing different patterns of paper to use: either stick wrapping paper to card, or let them draw their own designs. Individually wrapped sweets are a nice treat to put in the middle, and encourage them to write their own jokes or quiz questions, too. A downloadable cracker template and instructions on how to assemble them can be found here.

Paper snowflakes

Requiring just paper and scissors, these might be the simplest craft on our list, but the finished product can look very impressive. To involve younger children, let them draw the pattern they want to make for you to cut out, and, not to sound like a broken record, but putting glitter on stuff is fun. If you want some tips on picture-perfect snowflakes, here is a good tutorial.

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