Christmas and Holiday Crafts for Toddlers
Arts and crafts are an important skill building and learning tool for young children and toddlers. Grabbing crayons or learning to cut paper develop fine motor skills and muscles that will be later used to button up clothing, tie their shoes, and write their first story.
In addition to building fine motor skills, arts and crafts projects help children explore their creativity, learn patterns and counting, and recognize shapes and colors.
These messy, colorful, wonderful activities are perfect for the holidays. With so many seasonal inspirations, toddlers can enjoy creating playful scenes, making homemade cards, and more.
Here are just a few of our favorite easy holiday crafts for toddlers:
Egg Carton Ornaments - The Pinterested Parent
This craft takes a little prep work, but will be worth the effort. Turn your leftover egg carton into a Christmas canvas for your little painter. The best part is, these ornaments won’t break if dropped. Get the full tutorial here.
Decorating Christmas Tree Bottles - Stir the Wonder
Save your plastic bottles for this fun Christmas tree craft. Green bottles are preferred, but any color will do. Allow your little one to use their imagination and fine motor skills to trim their miniature tree with stickers. Find the steps to this project here.
Handprint Christmas Cards - Arty Crafty Kids
These adorable cards are ones that grandparents, aunts, uncles, and other loved ones are sure to treasure. Use your toddler’s hand print to create an adorable reindeer. Visit ArtyCraftyKids to see this tutorial, as well as other handprint and footprint card ideas.
Hanukkah Kid’s Menorah - Hallmark
Let your toddler express their creative side as they paint left-over cardboard tubes to create the base of colorful menorah candles. Use a popsicle craft stick and colored paper to create the candle flame. See this and more craft ideas at Hallmark.
Bubble Wrap Snowy Tree - Glued to My Crafts Blog
Getting a lot of packages this time of year? Save some of that bubble wrap for this perfect toddler-friendly craft. Painting the bubble wrap white and use it as a stamp to make beautiful snow covered trees. But, if your toddler is creative, don’t stop there. They can use this technique to create pink trees, blue trees, rainbow trees… whatever makes them smile. They can even use it to enhance the ornament craft from () below. Get the full tutorial here.
Paper Plate Christmas Wreath - Glued to My Crafts
Here’s another craft kids will love from Glued to My Crafts. This simple art project is endlessly adaptable. Cut the center out of a paper plate to let your little one decorate their own wreath. They can use tissue paper, cut out handprints, paint, crayons, glue, glitter, Christmas light stickers, and more. The possibilities are endless. Once the glue has dried, you’ll love being able to proudly hang this wreath up for all to see.
Simple Ornaments - Mama Smiles
For this easy craft, you only need paper and crayons. Though paint, glitter, stickers, or even bubble wrap from the craft above would work as well. Cut out ornament shapes for your toddler to decorate. Or, let them express themselves on a piece of paper and then cut the shapes out after they are done. No matter your technique or art supplies, the result will be colorful Christmas tree ornaments perfect for adding holiday cheer. Get more info from Mama Smiles here.
Color Matching Christmas Tree - Fantastic Fun and Learning
This cute craft idea combines creativity with coloring learning, fine motor skills, and matching. Invite your little one to match the stickers. Placing them on top of each other will take care and attention, but they’ll be proud of a job well done. Get the full tutorial here.
Cotton Ball Snowman - A Little Pinch of Perfect
For this easy Christmas craft, draw the outline of a snowman onto a sheet of paper. Give your child a pile of snowballs and a plate of glue for dipping. Or, to contain the mess, pre-squeeze the glue onto the paper for them. This fluffy project is perfect for family fun around the table. Read the tutorial here.
Paper Plate Christmas Tree Craft - Easy Peasy and Fun
This activity will require a little help from mom and dad, but is still easy to complete. First let your child paint a paper plate green (or whatever colors they’d like). Once it dries, follow the tutorial at Easy Peasy and Fun to wrap the plate into a Christmas tree cone. Now your toddler can decorate with stickers, pom poms, yarn, glitter or anything else in your craft supplies. These make adorable additions to your table decorations around the holidays.
Candy Cane Tape Resist Art - Things to Share and Remember
Painting in the lines is tough for little hands. By using paint to block out the white stripes, these candy canes turn out perfect every time. For extra creative fun, let your toddler apply the masking tape strips for a wild and creative pattern of their own. Get the full tutorial here.
Keep little hands busy and little minds actively engaged with these easy Christmas crafts for toddlers. Not only will you be promoting your toddler’s natural creativity and curiosity, you’ll also enjoy adding all the adorable masterpieces they create to your festive décor.
