Christmas

Christmas Tree Crafts for Kids

November 9, 2018 By Terri Thompson

I just love making fun Christmas crafts! Do you?

If your looking for some fun ideas, you’ll love these fun Christmas tree crafts for kids. They’re so much fun and all would make great decorations, either as ornaments or on display elsewhere.

Get into the holiday spirit while creating with your kids when you make these fun and pretty Christmas tree crafts for kids.

You’ll find ideas that are appropriate for kids of all ages. Toddlers would love making Spin Art Trees and preschoolers will love the Sparkly Tree Banner. Or, gather the whole family to make a Family Hand Print Tree.

Let’s gather some supplies and start crafting!

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Fun Christmas Tree Crafts for Kids

Our fun Paper Plate Christmas Tree makes a fun and colorful decoration.

Decorate your windows with our pretty Sparkly Christmas Tree Banner.

Learn how to quill when you make this pretty Quilled Christmas Tree Card from Red Ted Art.

Create a fun keepsake when you make this Family Hand Print Christmas Tree from Mama Smiles.

Use pom poms to make a cute Christmas Tree Ornament from Preschool Inspirations.

Decorate a tree with stickers with this fine motor Christmas craft from Hands On As We Grow.

Work together to create a Christmas tree out of a pine cone with this craft from Crystal & Co.

Use a few simple supplies to make this fun Craft Stick Christmas Tree from Easy Peasy and Fun.

This Pipecleaner Christmas Tree Ornament from Red Ted Art is fun to make and will look great on your tree.

Create pretty Christmas trees with this fun Spin Art Tree Art Project from Teaching 2 and 3 Year Olds.

Make a Beaded Tissue Paper Tree from Happy Hooligans and get a little fine motor practice too.

Use clay to make a pretty Christmas Tree Pinch Pot from The Imagination Tree.

Which of these Christmas tree crafts for kids do you want to make with?

White Chocolate Pretzels With Printable Gift Tags

December 14, 2017 By Terri Thompson

No matter how many fun Christmas activities we do each year, one thing is constant, we always make Christmas treats together.

My girls love to help out in the kitchen and as they’ve gotten older, they’ve been able to do more and more themselves.

One of their favorite things to make are these White Chocolate Pretzels. They’re so easy and my girls can do much of the work themselves.

Simple White Chocolate Pretzels are a fun homemade gift to make this year. Just package them up pretty and pair them with a printable gift tag.

I’m going to show you how you can make these pretzels and how to turn them into a pretty handmade gift.

I’ve got a set of six printable gift tags for you to use on this or any other gift. Head to the end of this post to download and print your gift tags.

Disclaimer: This post contains Amazon Affiliate and other affiliate links. Please see my Disclosure Page for more details.

White Chocolate Pretzels Ingredients

(Makes approximately 6 dozen pretzels)
12 oz. white candy melt*
Pretzels
Holiday sprinkles

*Note on white candy melt – My grocery store sells white candy melt in blocks. It’s also called white bark or almond bark. You can also usually find packages of white candy melt in disc form with the cake supplies in many craft and grocery stores.

How to Make White Chocolate Pretzels

Melt your white candy melt according to package directions. Most have microwave directions. I put mine in the microwave for 30 seconds. When you pull it out, it still looks like it is in solid form. It will melt more once you stir. It’s very important that you stir your candy melt after it’s first time in the microwave before deciding to reheat it more. Mine melted completely with a bit of stirring. If you overheat the white candy melt, it can become gritty and unusable.

Use a fork to dip your pretzels in your melted candy coating. The fork will help the extra candy melt drip back into the bowl.

Place your dipped pretzels on wax paper to cool and harden. Sprinkle your pretzels with your choice of sprinkles immediately after you pull them out of the candy melt. You want to sprinkle your pretzels before they start cooling. We would stop and sprinkle after about every five pretzels.

Let the pretzels cool completely before packaging (or eating).

My girls, ages 6 and 8, are able to make these pretzels almost completely by themselves. I will melt the chocolate, then let them take over. They love being able to take ownership over the whole process. I will note that when my girls make these, we get considerably less pretzels out of a batch. They are really generous with the candy coating! I made a batch by myself and ended up with 6-1/2 dozen. Their batch had 3-1/2 dozen!

Package it up with these pretty Christmas gift tags

These white chocolate pretzels are such a great idea for a homemade gift. Fill up a mason jar with pretzels and tie a pretty gift tag around the mouth. It’s so pretty and so easy!

I created a set of simple round labels that look great on a mason jar. Just download and print a set on white card stock. There are six labels on a page.

Download your gift tags here.

Spread the joy! Candy-coated pretzels are too yummy to keep them all yourself.

For even more yummy Christmas treats, check out these fabulous bloggers:

No Roll Easy Kid Friendly Pastry Recipe for Christmas Mince Pies at Rainy Day Mum

How to Make Christmas Cookies at The Creative Pair

Gingerbread Iron Golem Biscuits for Minecraft Fans at The Gingerbread House

Christmas Cookie Gift Jar at Sun Hats and Wellie Boots

How to Make a Simple Festive Ice Cream at Witty Hoots

Gluten-Free Orange Cranberry Dip at Freshly Planted

Hot Chocolate Cookies with Marshmallow Frosting at Kitchen Counter Chronicles

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookies at Tales of Beauty for Ashes

Spiral Cookie Lollipops at Teach Me Mommy

Delicious Dairy Free Ginger Spice Cookies at Crafty Kids at Home

Almond Melt-Away Snowball Cookies at Chocolate Mama Loves Vanilla

Salt Dough Candy Cane Ornament

December 4, 2017 By Terri Thompson

Christmas always makes me nostalgic.

I pull out all the ornaments we’ve collected over the years and I hang up the stockings my Mom lovingly cross stitched for everyone in our family.

I set up my Grandmother’s nativity scene.

We read some of the Christmas books I had as a child.

And, I always want to try and recreate some of the Christmas crafts I remembered doing as a child, like this Salt Dough Candy Cane Ornament.

Give your Christmas tree an old-fashioned flair with a Salt Dough Candy Cane Ornament. It's such a fun keepsake ornament your kids will love to make.

Did you ever make these Salt Dough Candy Cane Ornaments as a child?

I know I did, or at least I think I did. It’s one of those crafts that have become so ingrained in my head that I feel like I’ve known about it forever.

Since it’s just not Christmas without a salt dough project (or at least to me it’s not), I added this craft to our activity advent calendar. Now we’ve got a whole batch of these fun candy canes hanging on our tree.

Disclosure: This post contains Amazon Affiliate links. Please see my Disclosure Page for more details.

Have you ever made salt dough before? I just love working with it. It’s easy to make and easy to work with.

Salt Dough Recipe

1 cup salt
1 cup flour
1/2 cup warm water

Mix the salt and the flour together. Next add 1/2 cup of warm water. Mix until combined and a dough forms. The consistency should be similar to play dough.

For the candy canes, divide the dough into two equal parts. Add red food coloring (or red liquid watercolor) to one half of the dough and knead it in until it is as red as you want it to be. I used liquid water colors for ours. Keep the other half natural.

We were able to make 10 salt dough candy canes with one batch of dough.

How to make a Salt Dough Candy Cane Ornament

To make our candy canes, we took a small chunk of white and a small chunk of red dough. The girls rolled each one out until they made equal-sized snakes.

A word of caution: we discovered that if we made our snakes too skinny, they broke when we tried to twist them together.

After they had rolled out their dough, they twisted the two colors together.

We pressed the ends together just a bit so they would stay together. Then, we took the twist and curled one side into a hook.

We had our candy canes!

As you can see, we had all shapes and sized of candy canes. Some average size, some short, and one really big one.

I added them all to a parchment-lined baking sheet and put them in a 250 degree F oven.

It’s hard to predict exactly how long they need to be in the oven, so check them after one hour. Continue to check until your candy canes are hard. Ours took about 2 hours. The thickness of the candy canes, the amount you make, and your type of oven all factor into the amount of time it takes to harden. I always recommend to check them on a regular basis.

Once our candy canes had cooled off, I tied some twine around them so the girls could hang them on the tree.

It was an afternoon filled with Christmas nostalgia.

Even though I was mostly an observer, I’ve still got those candy canes hanging on my tree to remind me of all the fun I had with the girls while making the Salt Dough Candy Cane Ornament of my childhood.

The Best Salt Dough Ornaments for Kids

November 30, 2017 By Terri Thompson

Some of my favorite and most long-lasting kid-made ornaments on our tree are made from salt dough.

Salt dough is such a fun medium to use. It’s easy to make, simple for little hands to work with, and the creative possibilities are endless.

Every year I find great ideas for salt dough ornaments for kids. And, we’ve made several of our own to decorate our Christmas tree.

Disclosure: This post contains Amazon Affiliate and other affiliate links. Please see my Disclosure Page for more details.

I’ve rounded up some of my favorite salt dough ornament ideas. Some of these are ideas we’ve made ourselves and others and ideas I’d love to try.

I just know you’ll find some great ideas you’ll want to do with your kids!

Handprint, Footprint, and Fingerprint Salt Dough Ornaments for Kids

Use handprints to make a fun group of snowmen with this beautiful Snowman Keepsake Ornament from Learning and Exploring Through Play. This would also be a perfect ornament to give as a gift.

These Salt Dough Fingerprint Baubles from The Best Ideas for Kids are super simple and super fun to make. Don’t you want some on your tree?

Use your fingerprints to make the lights on the tree with this fun Christmas Tree Ornament idea from Mommy’s Bundle.

Or, you can use your fingerprints to make buttons for these cute Gingerbread Man Ornaments from The Imagination Tree.

Your handprint is the perfect canvas for this Handprint Santa Ornament from From ABCs to ACTs.

Show off your little one’s adorable footprints with this Mistletoe Footprint Keepsake Ornament from Fun Handprint Art.

Use an imprint of your finger to make a cute nutcracker. Check out Rainy Day Mum to make a Keepsake Nutcracker Ornament.

Fingerprints turn into an adorable snowman enjoying the snow with this Snowman Ornament from Crafty Morning.

Turn your footprint into an adorable reindeer ornament with this adorable Footprint Reindeer Ornament from Fun Handprint Art.

More Fun Salt Dough Ornaments for Kids

Add a little old-fashioned flair to your tree when you make a batch of our Salt Dough Candy Cane Ornaments.

Make a batch of colored salt dough and use it to make our pretty Salt Dough & Pony Beads Ornaments.

Does your kid love emojis? If so, they’ve love to make this fun and silly Salt Dough Emoji Ornaments from Kitchen Counter Chronicles.

Get out cookie cutters for these Glittery Salt Dough Ornaments from The Best Ideas for Kids.

Use Christmas-scented salt dough to make a lovely Christmas Star Garland from Rainy Day Mum.

Melt pony beads in the middle of your ornaments to make these beautiful Salt Dough Suncatcher Ornaments from Homegrown Friends.

What’s Christmas without the Grinch? Decorate your tree with these fun Grinch Ornaments from Kitchen Counter Chronicles.

Use sea glass to decorate a Christmas tree with this beautiful Tree Ornament from Red Ted Art.

Decorate your ornaments with melted crayon to make these Melted Crayon Salt Dough Ornaments from The Artful Parent.

Let your imagination guide you to make whatever ornaments you like with Rainy Day Mum’s recipe for The Quickest Ever Salt Dough. It’s a great basic recipe to get you started creating!

No matter what you decide, simple is always a good idea. Mama Smiles shows you how her daughter helped guide the process to make a whole batch of salt dough ornaments. While Crayon Freckles shows you how to involve your child in every step of the process. Let them make the salt dough and then create with it.

Which of these salt dough ornaments for kids are you going to make with your family this year?

Stained Glass Window Ornament

November 20, 2017 By Terri Thompson

The girls love making new ornaments for our Christmas tree.

In fact, if I ask them if they want to do a craft project, they usually tell me they want to make a new Christmas ornament.

One of our recent creations was our Stained Glass Window Ornament. This was so easy to make and are a perfect choice if you’re looking for a mess-free kids’ Christmas craft.

This Stained Glass Window Ornament is fun for toddlers and preschoolers to make. Plus, it makes a colorful addition to your Christmas tree.

Disclosure: This post contains Amazon Affiliate and other affiliate links. Please see my Disclosure Page for more details.

Supplies Needed:

Clear Contact Paper
Black construction paper
Colored tissue paper torn into small pieces
Scissors
Hole punch
String

Prep your project

In order to prep this project, I cut the window shapes out of the black construction paper. You’ll need two window cutouts for each ornament. If you double-up the paper and cut two at once, it will make it much easier to match up the two pieces in the end.

I taped down a piece of Contact Paper and placed the window pieces on it.

Each girl was going to make two stained glass window ornaments.

Make your Stained Glass Window Ornament

Now for the fun part!

The girls started applying the tissue paper. Don’t worry about covering up the black construction paper, we’ll take care of that part later.

My toddler, in particular, loved the stickiness of the Contact Paper. Not only was this a fun craft for her, but a great sensory experience as well.

She wouldn’t stop applying tissue paper until the entire piece of Contact Paper was covered.

After we were done with the tissue paper, we took the coordinating window pieces and lined them up with the ones already on the contact paper.

You will now have two window cutouts with tissue paper in between.

Finally, cover the entire project with a second sheet of contact paper.

Cut out each window, punch a hole in the top and add a string for hanging on the tree. Voila, it’s done!

Now, we have a beautiful Stained Glass Window Ornament hanging on our tree.

Do you have any fun and simple ideas for Christmas ornaments? I’m running out of ideas!

*Special note: This post was originally published in 2011. It’s a timeless activity that’s been updated for this year.

Christmas

Christmas Tree Crafts for Kids

Fun Christmas Tree Crafts for Kids

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