Hoilday Crafts for Kids

Get your craft supplies ready for the next holiday season.kids paint craft image by Christopher Hill from Fotolia.com

During time away from school at the holidays, or to add a little excitement to a holiday season, kids and parents can occupy themselves with easy-to-do craft projects. These projects will not only be a source of entertainment for the kids, but the resulting creations will also enhance the holiday décor around the home. No matter what holiday you are celebrating, there are likely kids craft options for it. The following are crafts to accompany some of the most commonly celebrated holidays on the calendar.

Christmas Craft

An easy and unusual Christmas craft for kids to make is a holiday puzzle picture frame. All you’ll need are a pile of puzzle pieces from any jigsaw puzzle, tempera paint in red, green and brown, a glue stick, an empty cereal box and scissors. Two tiny adhesive doll eyes and a small red pompom ball from a craft store will add the finishing touches.

Use the scissors to cut out a piece of thin cardboard from the side of a cereal box that is the size you’d like the picture frame to be. Center a photo on the cardboard and trace the edges for a guide. You’ll want to leave at least an inch for frame area. Leave three puzzle pieces to the side, and paint half of the remaining puzzle pieces red and half of them green. Glue them around the edge of the frame, overlapping one another. Paint the three leftover pieces brown. Glue the eyes and red pompom nose on one piece to make a reindeer face and use the other two pieces as antlers. Attach the puzzle reindeer to one corner of the frame with glue.

Turn ordinary brown lunch bags into great Halloween treat bags or decorations and give the kids an enjoyable activity at the same time. In addition to the brown lunch bags, you’ll need orange and green tempera paint and a sponge.

Dip the sponge in the orange paint and use the sponge to cover the palm of the child’s hand with paint. Do not include the fingers. With the bag lying flat on the table or ground, have the child press his palm onto the bag. The shape will become a jack-o-lantern. Have him dip the tip of his index finger into the green paint and draw a stem coming out the top. Add eyes, a nose and a mouth as desired. Allow the bags to dry and the kids will have a festive bag to put treats in, or line them up along your driveway with glow sticks dropped inside for a spooky effect.

Gather fallen leaves and a pinecone in the autumn to create a fun kid’s Thanksgiving craft. Besides the leaves and the pinecone, the only supplies you’ll need will be a pair of glue-on eyes from the craft store, a pair of scissors and construction paper in red, yellow and black.

Use the black construction paper as a background and fan out and layer your fall leaves to form a turkey’s tail feathers, creating a semi-circle of leaves. Glue them all down to the background. In the middle of the fan, glue on a pinecone lengthwise, so that the tip of the pinecone points upward to the top of the fan. The pinecone will become the turkey's body. Cut a triangle from the yellow paper for a beak and an oblong shape from the red to make the wattle. Glue the eyes in place at toward the top of the pinecone, and assemble and glue the beak and wattle below them. Let the glue dry, and you'll have a Thanksgiving decoration to hang up and show off.

Do something cool in the hot days of summer by making Fourth of July fans to beat the heat. You'll need two eight-inch squares of card stock - one white and one blue. You'll also need a wooden paint stirrer, glue, red tape and star stickers available from a craft store.

Use the red tape to add stripes across the face of the white piece of card stock on one side. Glue the blank side of the card stock to one side of the paint stirrer. Apply a field of sticky stars to one side of the blue piece of card stock and glue the blank side to the other side of the paint stirrer. Apply a small amount of glue on the inside of each card stock side and press them together to join them. Allow the glue to dry completely and you'll have a fan to wave that is covered in stars and stripes for Independence Day.