Christmas Craft Ideas for the Classroom!

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Children love making crafts for the holidays and as gifts to their parents and/or family! These crafts make great keepsakes and will bring back fond memories in the years to come.

FELT ORNAMENTS - Use felt to cut holiday shapes traced from cookie cutters. Use green for trees, gold for stars, brown for gingerbread men, etc. Decorate with rick rack, buttons, glitter, etc. Punch a hole at the top and use red or green ribbon as a tie. Idea: Have students write their name in glue and stick glitter to glue. These make great Christmas tree ornaments and keepsakes!

CHRISTMAS PICTURE FRAME - Use inexpensive acrylic frames. Have child make a border on frames by glueing jingle bells, ribbons, glitter or bows to the edges of the frame. Use frame for that year's school picture and give to grandparents for a gift.

DOUGH ORNAMENTS - Use the salt dough recipe below. Cut out holiday shapes with cookie cutters. Add any details with a toothpick. Use a straw to make a hole in top of ornament for tree hanger. Bake as directed below. Make sure they are dry and hard. Cool completely. Decorate with acrylic paint, glitter, beads, etc. After decorating, varnish with a clear acrylic paint.

Salt Dough Recipe

• 3 Cups of Flour
• 1 Cup of Salt
• 1 1/4 Cups of Hot Water
• Dissolve salt into water, then slowly add flour. Stir until mixed. (Hint: If dough sticks to hands, add more flour. If dough is crumbly, add more water.)
• Knead dough (about 10 minutes) and roll out
• Cut out with shaped cookie cutters.
• Bake at 325 degrees until dry and hard. (about 1 1/2 hours - time varies according to thickness)
• Cool completely.
• Decorate

Christmas Craft Books

December Arts & Crafts, Grades PreK-K By The Mailbox Book Company With a book for every month of the school year, you can simplify your approach to arts and crafts! in each book you'll find a month's worth of fresh art activities to extend your curriculum. Crafts are conveniently grouped by seasonal and monthly themes so you'll always have the perfect art activity ready when you need it. This colorful arts-and-crafts collection is easy to use and a great companion to our monthly idea book series and our monthly reproducible book series. Features: clear step-by-step instructions convenient materials lists reproducible patterns full-color illustration of each finished project handy teacher tips Some of the themes: Gingerbread Christmas Hanukkah Kwanzaa Toys Snowmen Preschool/Kindergarten. Softcover, 32 pages.

Advent Arts & Christmas Crafts: Prayers & Rituals for Family, School & Church By Jeanne Heiberg / Paulist Press This book has step-by-step instructions for creating dozens of decorations and gifts for the holiday season, using simple materials. It is a perfect resource for families, parochial schools and Sunday schools.

Creating Holiday Greeting Cards, Grades PreK-3 By Peggy Gwinn, Randy Womack & Diane Haddon / Golden Education Center Kids love getting and making greeting cards on holidays; this reproducible book is filled with full page cards ready for children to color and give away! With large illustrations and cute phrases, the full size pages can be either mounted back to back or cut out and pasted upon construction paper. Contains 22 cards for Mother's Day, Christmas, Birthdays, Easter and other major holidays. For preschool through 3rd grade.

175 Easy-to-Do Christmas Crafts By Boyds Mills Press Everything you need to create a wonderful holiday season can be found in this craft book filled with lots of fun crafts to make. You and the kids will have hours of family time as you make reindeer, snowmen, angels, ornaments, and lots more. The directions are easy to follow and the full-color photographs help even the youngest craft maker to be successful.

More Preschool Christmas Craft and Activity Books >>

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