Hey anyone got some super cute (&super easy) holiday craft ideas for a first grade party? This is my homework for the weekend and I’m stumped.
Some of my other weekend homework…
A captivating gang of 24 huggable, lovable creatures to sew—from classics like Margot, a topsy-turvy doll, and the button-jointed teddy bear Bjorn Bjornson, to irresistible Evelyn, a wool felt inchworm decked out in mod glasses and a kerchief, and Koji, a fiercely cute spiked softie monster. There’s something for everyone here—from kids to grown-ups and from beginning sewers to advanced dollmakers. Published by STC Craft, August, 2010.
rolling beeswax candles? and decorating them with bits of wax? Dipping pinecones in glue and glitter (how messy do you want to get?) Making bookmarks?
(I don’t know if my ideas are very cute or original,You could also get pillar candles and decorating beeswax and just decorate the pillars…)
I do love your embroidery, such a cool perspective on this one!
Love that little guy reading.
pipecleaner candy canes, marshmallow snowfolks, saltdough ornaments, felt stars w/sequins as ornaments, bits of tissue glued to jars as lanterns. have you checked out crafty crow?
i love the embroidery! planning some stitchette gifts this winter.
Don’t know if there’s an english term for “tomterader” when you cut out silhouettes of elfs or christmastrees or something so that they form a garland that can stand up, like this one:http://www.designonline.se/Products/sek1/Trademark/Advent+and+Christmas/6204/Tomterad+och+kruktomte&VariantId=07&utm_source=kelkoose&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=kelkooclick
only this one is made in metal. We always did these in school when I was little
Oh what darling embroidery! For the party you could draw a template of an animal with simple shapes and have the kids cut out those shapes, glue them together and decorate. For example, a large circle, a smaller circle, two triangles and four small rectangles for a pig. Then they can glue the head, body, ears, arms and legs together after cutting it all out, decorate with crayons and add a pipe cleaner tail.
What about making Holiday crackers? (Minus the big popping sound maker) http://www.mahalo.com/how-to-make-christmas-crackers
The kids could fill them with paper crowns, garlands and other quick crafty items.
Photo frames! Take each child’s photo upon arrival and print copies (or Walgreens should have them printed in under an hour), then the kids can each make a frame for the photo.
Make the frames out of anything – Mod Podge and fabric collage, felt, whatnot, etc.
LOVE the embroidery! Can’t wait to see more!
When I was that age I used to loved making concertina paper decorations – this sort of idea (http://www.minieco.co.uk/folded-paper-garland/) but just with long strips of crepe paper so it’s a bit simpler. You could also make Rudolph decorations – brown paper circle for them to draw a face, red tissue to scrunch up for nose and twigs for antlers. You could also use lollipop sticks to make angels – felt/paper triangles glued on for dress, wool/floss for hair and paper wings (decorated or glittered etc) stuck on the back. Pom poms to hang on the tree? If I remember any more I’ll come back and comment again. I’m sure there are more tucked away in my brain somewhere…
Wreaths made of buttons strung on florists wire. Tie a bow on to hang from the tree or on the door. We have a craft party the first day of Christmas vacation, and this is always popular!
oh I love those! I’ve never been able to figure out how to cut them.
where do you get the buttons? seems like it’d be an expensive project?
You could also use small jingle bells in various colors. Kids love to make noise!
no! duh! heading over there now, thx 🙂
Making snowmen out of marshmallows.
If you make sugar cookies and multiple colors of royal icing, then kids can do edible painting with small tubes of color. It would be relatively easy to clean but messy in a way that most kids like. Unless someone has an egg or gluten allergy, then everyone will have something they can eat or bring home to their parents.
how about the glass ornaments that you squirt paint in, put the cap on and then shake to swirl the colors? or styrofoam balls to stick sequins/beads on (using straight pins)? i could probably come up with more ideas if you need them.
I remember making snow globes when I was in elementary school. Here is a link to Martha Stewart’s version: http://www.marthastewart.com/good-things/snow-globes. Loving the new embroidery series!
My daughter loves to draw on fabric with fabric crayons (I think Crayola makes some.) I’m going to sew circles of white muslin together into little pillows (with a ribbon loop hanging out) and let her draw on them, I’ll heat-set the drawing, and let her stuff it and stitch it shut. Do you have time to make a Christmas ornament like this with the kids?? Can’t wait to see what you come up with 🙂
And….brain fog, you could totally use regular crayons for this project too 😉
Start with a chenile stem – 1/2 to 2/3rds length that comes in a standard package. Someone needs to put a closed loop at one end so nothing slides off.
Have ready a stack of pre-cut paper strips 1 to 3 inches wide – ideally old Christmas Cards, but construction paper works, too. Punch one hole at both ends, about 1 inch in from the end.
To start: Slide on several pony beads, then 10-15 paper strips, another 5-10 beads, then pull the paper stipes up and thread onto the chenile stem. They can be in order, opposite order, or random order.
To finish: top with more more pony beads and shape the top 3 inches into a hook to put on a tree or hang elsewhere. These look nice hanging from a ceiling fan chain or anywhere a breeze (or the heater) might catch them. Plus, no glue, no glass and no glitter!
The bead candy canes are really easy for kids to make with no help (http://uklassinus.blogspot.com/2007/12/traditions.html).
When we made the button wreaths (http://uklassinus.blogspot.com/2008/11/ornaments-as-promised-ive-seen-couple.html) we found the buttons at a $1 store, but I’ve seen bigs bags of misc. buttons at Jo-Anns.
Or how about paper snowflake garlands?
Little felt iceskates? (http://uklassinus.blogspot.com/2007/12/wee-little-shoes.html)
Those cardboard angels – the bottom is a cone shape, but the top half has wings on each side.
Ok, that’s all I can think of right now. I had better get back to cleaning the house…
I think I saw this idea mentioned in your comments, but there are some great pipe cleaner candy canes, snowflakes, and wreaths in Martha Stewart Living from last December (but they’d be great for kids!). I can email you photos of the ones I made, and you can easily see how they are put together. My email address is kittens.lost.her.mittens [at] gmail [dot] com. Let me know if you’d like me to send the photos!
Awesome embroidery! Hmmmmm….holiday ideas. Homemade ornaments: You can take old cereal boxes, cut triangles out from them, glue on scrapbook paper, and they are Christmas trees. Embellish with beads, sequins, buttons, whatever. Then glue a ribbon or something on top to hang them with.
My mom and I use to make cinnamon ornaments for Christmas. These are my favorite holiday craft. They are easy to make, the only hard part is waiting for them to dry. You can however dry them in the oven on a low setting if you’re in a hurry. Then once they’re dry the kids can decorate them with paint, glitter, glue and sparkles…etc. Here is a link for the recipe and how-to instructions. http://www.astorybooklife.com/recipes/cinnamon-applesauce-ornaments/
PS These make your house smell great or you can hang them in your car so you’ll be in the Christmas mood when doing all your holiday shopping!
Here’s a second idea I use to do with kids when I babysat in Jr. High. On a cheap tee shirt paint a raindeer head shape. Get the kids to dip their hands in dark brown paint and place them on the deer head as it’s antlers. Then glue on googly eyes and a pompom nose and you have a great custom, one of a kind tee!
Potato stamping fabric paint onto fabric napkins? Salt dough ornaments for their trees?
I love making rudolph puppets out of brown paper lunch bags. For antlers, I have the kids trace their hands.
Lots of lovely ideas! We like to make stained glass window biscuits. Use a recipe for ginger biscuits and cut the pastry into strips to lay out into window frames. Place on a greased baking tray (maybe with greaseproof paper) and fill the windows with different coloured boiled sweets. When they bake, the sweets melt to make stained glass windows which can be hung up as decorations or taste yummy too.
That’s what I was going to suggest! I used to do it at my old preschool and it’s an easy project that can get as complicated as each child can handle. The little ones would just string large buttons on pipecleaners; and the older ones liked to sort them by color and size and make pine trees, reindeer and even santas.
Glittery pinecones! (Mine still hangs on the tree!) Reindeer made from clothes pins. Not sure what they are called but those cookie dough ornaments are cute.
If you want to go simple, just make paper snowflakes (smallish), then the kids can glue them on the front of a construction paper card and then embellish with glitter or sequins or whatnot and draw/color/write inside the card for their parents or grandparents. I don’t know of a parent or grandparent who wouldn’t like a handmade card from their child/grandchild.
Or if you’re wanting fall instead of winter, just use leaves instead of snowflakes. Either real ones, rubbed ones, or cut out paper ones.
There’s the always classic “Gingerbread House” project, using graham crackers, frosting and gobs of candy.
It’s quite simple really, just fold the paper like an accordion and then cut the shape you like, leaving some part, like the hands, uncut on the fold so they form a long row.
I think the kids would love doing the gingerbread houses with graham crackers. We used to make them in grade school and used the icing to glue the graham crackers to a milk carton. That way no one needed engineering skills. Also kids love puppets. You could always do brown paper bag puppets of elves and reindeer.
http://www.thriftyfun.com/tf64393897.tip.html
three out of four of us (my siblings and myself) had the same 1st grade teacher. i always felt bad for my youngest brother since he never got to make this craft. i just did a search to find a site with the vague idea of it. we used felt for santa’s suit and hat. the ones we made also had dangling legs.
we did these last year and the kids loved them. Nice because they are more winter than christmas. Kids drew whatever winter/holiday scene they wanted.
http://www.craftelf.com/Craft_elf_holiday_Christmas_Holiday_Snowglobe.htm
Love these.
Hi there. Stumbled upon your blog *LOVE*, bought a pattern *LOVE* and had an idea for a simple holiday ornament. Wee little bird ornaments on a twig. Just find little sticks (no more than 4-5″), with a “Y” at one end. Glue a mushroom bird on it. Then some snowflake’ish glitter along the twig. Wrap a little wire around and loop the end for hanging. They are really cute. Simple. Though sometimes it’s hard to find the “micro” mushroom birds.
I’ve also used an acorn cap for a nest and glued some moss in it. Then the bird. Then glued the nest on the “Y” of the branch. Then snow. =) If you go to my etsy shop (way back in the sold items”, you can see a pic of one. =) Cheers and Good Luck!
One project I trotted out for several years as a room parent was sock snowmen:
http://houseofhodgepodge.blogspot.com/2009/01/sock-snowmen.html
We also had kids make hot chocolate cones:
http://familyfun.go.com/recipes/hot-chocolate-cones-687223/
Or beaded snowflakes (which turn out so pretty even if kids don’t follow a precise pattern):
http://crafts.kaboose.com/beaded-snowflake-decoration.html
And you definitely need to have a cookie decorating station!
Sorry, my second post…if your kids are at public school, you might want to make sure any craft involving wreaths or Santa are OK to do. We have to be careful at my kids’ public school to keep it winter/snow related, and not have overtly Christmas things at the party, unless we take care to include things from other cultures/religions (eg: dreidls). It is easier to just focus on snowmen, snowflakes, and other winter things!
okay, I have nothing to add, but am so grateful for the ideas as I have a cub scout pack and some little ones at home as well as a catechism class of first graders. Love the ideas!
I did a workshop yesterday for a bunch of Girl Scouts and we made Holiday Gift Wrapping Paper out of Kraft Paper using cool native plant seed heads dipped into white tempera paint. I pre cut the “wrapping paper” and they loved making patterns. It looked so good, it was like Lotte Jansdotter good.
I sewed (lots of) cushions for the kids to draw on with the Crayola fabric markers. They were white for drawing on one side and cute fabric on the other. I made them A4 sized cloud shapes and were stuffed ready for the party. To set the markers I put the cushions into the dryer for 30 mins and that is supposed to make them washable (not that I tried washing them). I had lots of remarks that the girls were taking them to bed each night. Keep the shape simple and you won’t go nuts stuffing 16 or whatever number cushions. I was going to make them princess shaped so that they could draw in all the details themselves but that would have been very fiddly. Oh and some fabric markers don’t need to be heat set.
How about wreaths from cut up toilet paper/ hand towel tubes?
See here: http://www.growingupcreative.com/2009/10/eco-kids-craft.html
We made ribbon macaroni wreaths in our craft class (paint macaroni and stick to a cardboard wreath shape, decorate with bells and ribbon). This week we are making a Christmas tree out of paper plates (red paper plates with Christmassy shapes cut out of silver paper, glued on to the centre, and all attached to each other with silver twisty ties to make a tree shape. Check our blog for photos http://www.ilovecrafts-manila.blogspot.com. We got both ideas from some where on the web last year but lost the original links.
Hi… looks like you have a lot of craft ideas… but I’m actually wondering about that embroidery. Are these little reading people something you will have for sale? I’ve been wanting to make some things to put in my daughters’ reading corner, and these would be perfect!
Hi! My son and I made these snowmen last year with Crayola Model Magic. He loved it. I made the carrot noses from Fimo the night before and set out little trays for the “carrots” some mini buttons, and pipe cleaners. He rolled the clay into balls and pushed the features into the clay. Then we used pipe cleaners to join the heads and bodies. Really fun and simple.
http://mothandsparrow.blogspot.com/2009/12/in-meadow-we-can-build-snowman.html
And here is my third post on this topic! (I am in my ninth year as an elementary parent, so I can’t help myself…). A couple of years at the winter party we did a book exchange. We had kids bring in a wrapped, gently used book from home. The kids sat in a circle holding the wrapped book they brought. The teacher stood in the middle and read Jan Brett’s book The Hat to them. We picked two key words: Hedgie and Hat. Whenever the word Hedgie was mentioned in the story, the children passed their package to the left. When Hat was mentioned, they passed to the right. At the end of the story, they unwrapped the book they were holding and got to keep it. This can be fun, but also stressful. I always brought in extra wrapped books for kids who forgot to bring one in. Sometimes someone is really unhappy with the book they get (eg: a boy gets a girly book, or vice versa). When that happened, I would let them do a controlled trade, or else I’d have a few more extra books on hand and they could exchange. Have fun! This is my last year as an elementary mom, and while it’s been fun, I’m ready to be done with stuff like the parties. I have one in middle school now, and it’s just so much easier. For him I have to do…nothing!
This is a great list of christmas kid crafts! I vote for something made from toothpicks and gumdrops. Ornaments? Trees? Awesome freeform sculptures? Thought the sugar high might not be what you are going for.
Craft Stick Reindeer are cute and simple. One of my sisters made one years ago in about 1st grade. Using three skinny standard craft sticks, make a triangle where one point meets end to end (nose) and two points don’t and extend about 1-1.5 inches (antlers) Add a red pompom for nose on the end where they meet, and googly eyes just above them on the sticks. Red ribbon tied along the reindeer’s forehead, allows it to be hung.
Craft Stick snowflakes … I’m sure you’ve seen them and now they even sell craft sticks that have notches cut out of them to make even better snowflakes. Have them assembled and spray painted white. Let the children add glue and glitter. Even better if you can use a very small drill bit to put a small hole in one end to put a string for easy hanging.
Best of luck!
That sounds great! Gonna try it with my 4-year old! Maybe even some glitter glue, he just LOVES glitter glue!
Thanks for the idea!
Oh my! Love the sock snowmen!
We made hand-print reindeer ornaments (from a old craft book).
A picture here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/16443661@N03/5182611201/
What’s hilarious, is upside down they look like turkeys! (not intentionally)
Man! I am not sure if someone posted this already because there are a lot of posts but… cut an o shape for a wreath out of cardboard, have kids glue macaroni on it to look like a wreath, you can either paint after or paint the macaroni before the kids glue it. Put on a ribbon and you have an ornament, glue a pic of the kid to the middle and it is adorable.
One other one that we have done many times through out the years. Get a local bowling alley to donate old bowling pins and have the kids cover them with cotton balls, add felt mouth nose and eyes with something for a scarf and you have the cutest snowman!!!
Homemade white playdoh with a little glitter in it makes it look snowy. They can then make snow men, etc. Have some little twigs, beans, beads etc to decorate with. We did this at a holiday party last year.
I get lots of little bags of green buttons, and a couple red at Joann. When they are on sale, or when I have a coupon, they are pretty cheap. It would also be pretty with white or clear vintage buttons. Our wreaths are about 3-4 inches in diameter at a maximum.