‘Tis the season for crafting! We’re a project-loving household over here. I love to create, and my two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Reagan, is no different. Sprinkling crafts like these throughout the holiday months helps keep the festive magic going during the sometimes cold, and dreary winter season.
To help get you in the holiday spirit, I want to share four simple and toddler friendly Christmas crafts with you all.
Paper Plate Wreath
You’ll need paper plates, pom poms, green paint, paintbrush, and glue.
To begin, I cut the center out of the paper plate to create a wreath shape, and Reagan painted it green. If you’d rather not use paper plates, you can cut an “O” shape out of cardboard from your recycling bin. Once the green paint dried, (you can speed this process up with a hairdryer) it was time to embellish with the pom pom “ornaments.”
I wanted to keep this craft simple enough that my toddler could do it fairly independently, and allowing a not-quite-three-year-old to squeeze glue out of a bottle into small dots on the wreath seemed like a disaster waiting to happen. But by squeezing out a little pile of glue for her to just dip the pom poms in before sticking them down, the glue stayed right where she needed it.
If your child is old enough, you can use this project to work on creating patterns with the pom poms. Begin an x, y, x, y pattern and ask them to complete it, or ask them to create a pattern design of their own.
Pom Pom Painted Christmas Trees
You’ll need green and brown cardstock or construction paper, paints, pom poms, and clothespins.
This toddler friendly Christmas craft also uses pom poms, but this time we used them to actually do the painting!
First, I cut a simple Christmas tree shape out of green paper. I put out a few colors of paint in little dishes and then clipped the pom poms into the clothespins. To incorporate a little matching and color practice, I used pom poms that matched the various paints that my daughter chose, and had her use the appropriate “brush” in each color to create the tree’s ornaments.
Once she was finished, I added a little brown paper trunk to the bottom of the tree.
Tissue Paper Ornaments
You’ll need white cardstock, foam paintbrush, Mod Podge or white glue, and tissue paper.
I’m pretty anti-carving when it comes to toddlers decorating pumpkins, so for Halloween this year, we Mod Podged circles of tissue paper onto our pumpkins, and Reagan loved it. I thought she would love this same technique to create Christmas ornaments.
Before I got Reagan involved, I cut out small shapes of tissue paper in a variety of colors. When doing any toddler friendly Christmas craft, I like to make sure I get any of this tedious prep work out of the way before I even tell her we’re doing a project. I know she doesn’t want to sit at the table and watch me do something that she can’t even help with.
Using the Mod Podge and a foam brush, I had her paint areas of the cardstock ornament, and stick the tissue paper to them. It was so fun to watch her decide where she was going to place each piece of tissue paper and watch her creation come to life. At this point, you can leave it as is, or you and your child can carefully apply another thin layer of Mod Podge over the tissue paper to smooth everything down.
After these dried, I added a little square of black paper at the top, and a loop of ribbon to mimic the look of a real ball ornament. Once we have a Christmas tree, she will be able to hang these up with our other traditional ornaments.
Handprint Reindeer
You’ll need brown, white, and black paint, red pom poms, ribbon, and cardstock.
If your toddler doesn’t like to get her hands messy, this one probably isn’t for you. If they are all about the mess, however, full steam ahead! For this particular toddler-friendly Christmas craft, we made several to mail to Reagan’s out of town grandparents to hang on their Christmas trees.
We painted Reagan’s palm and fingers with brown paint and had her make handprints on the cardstock. It will probably take several attempts to get nice clear handprints. As long as the paint isn’t too thick, these dry pretty quickly.
I then cut closely around each handprint to create the reindeer shape. We added some cute eyes, a red pom pom nose, and some pretty matching ribbon, and they’re all done! Simple and sweet.
Are you a crafty household like we are? What are your favorite project ideas around the holiday season? We’re always on the hunt for new ideas to keep our crafty selves busy!
Thanks Ally! She loved that too! A good paintbrush alternative to change things up. ?
These are fantastic ideas! And the clothespin with pom-poms is genius!