It’s that wonderful time of year again! Here are the best ever Christmas Crafts and Activities for Kids from the huge Imagination Tree archives!
There’s enough here to keep your little ones happily playing, creating and learning for many Christmases to come! Here’s a whole collection of sensory play, crafts, fine motor skills and fun learning activities with Christmas themes.
I hope you will love this best ever Christmas Activities and Crafts for kids collection! Browse the following topics by theme and take your pick what to do first!
PLAY DOUGH
Play Dough makes a wonderful DIY gift when presented in a jar and attached to a cookie cutter or mini rolling pin. It is also wonderful set out in sensory and fine motor invitations to play trays alongside interesting loose parts and decorations, of which there are an abundance at this time of year!
You can find the BEST EVER PLAY DOUGH RECIPE HERE on my site. It is the number 1, tried and trusted DIY recipe in the world, with many millions of saves and happy reviews made over the past decade!
We have used this in SO many ways at home and in the classroom over the years. Here are some examples to get your creative juices flowing!
Christmas Tree play dough decorating with loose parts
The best ever, no-cook Gingerbread Play Dough recipe! It takes just 4-5 minutes to make and is the most wonderful sensory gift to add to a stocking!
Candy Cane Play Dough invitation to play tray, with red and white play dough (scented with peppermint oil), candy canes, red and white decorations and loose parts to explore with.
White snow play dough recipe! This bright white play dough looks amazing with glitter!
Winter play dough invitation to play with white play dough, natural loose parts and woodland creatures.
Winter wonderland play dough with sparkly loose parts, jingle bells and wooden snowflakes added as loose parts!
SALT DOUGH KEEPSAKES
Salt dough is so easy to make using everyday items from the pantry. It makes a wonderful DIY modelling material that lasts indefinitely and is perfect for creating handprint and footprint keepsakes. We have many salt dough keepsakes here on The Imagination Tree!
This Salt Dough Christmas Tree Handprint Keepsake is particularly good for the littlest hands and looks completely adorable decorated with fingerprint ornaments!
The peace dove handprint ornament is just beautiful and spreads a wonderful message too! Gift one to grandparents as a keepsake.
The nativity story handprint is my favourite we have ever created! Just soooo cute.
Rudolph handprint keepsake is a super cute alternative!
This Santa salt dough handprint is our newest version that we have made just this year, with added cotton balls to decorate! We used chalk markers for this one which made it SO quick to decorate!
Fingerprint Gingerbread Men ornaments are so sweet as a smaller alternative!
Want a similar but unique clay to use for your ornaments? Try my white clay recipe! It is so beautiful.
Have you ever tried my very unique Gingerbread CLAY recipe?! It is amazing to smell and also so easy to decorate. It looks like real gingerbread hanging on the tree when made into ornaments and lasts indefinitely! One of my absolute favourite inventions that I am very proud of! Find the recipe here on my site.
CRAFTS
Washi tape and paint sticks are a brilliant, simple way to decorate triangles of cardboard to turn them into pretty Christmas trees!
Paper plate yarn wrap wreath is fun, simple and a great fine motor work out too!
We’ve made yarn wrap Christmas trees and snowmen too!
You can find our yarn wrap trees here!
A simple snowman stuffy with two arms and button details is a great first sewing project!
Cut cardboard into circle shapes and decorate with chalk pens to make the sweetest, simple tree ornaments!
Pinch pots are easy to make and so awesome to give as gifts too! This Christmas tree shaped pinch pot one is one of our favourites.
Salad spinner ornaments and decorations are so easy to make using shaped card, paint and glitter glue!
One of the best ways to make a gingerbread house is to create it from cardboard and decorate is using chalk markers or paint sticks! It won’t collapse and can’t be eaten, so will certainly last a LOT longer! We used a plain decoupage cardboard house with a lid to decorate and they turned out so beautifully, but equally you could use a cardboard box!
SENSORY TRAYS
These are always a winner! Children of all ages can play together and engage their senses, develop motor skills and enjoy filling and emptying as they do so!
This scented peppermint rice with Christmas decorations and cups for transferring is a perfect first seasonal tray to set up! You can find out how to dye rice with ONE SIMPLE STEP in my best-ever method here on the Imagination Tree.
This golden, cinnamon scented tray is a feast for the senses!
Winter sensory table with a counting twist!
Candy canes, jingle bells, shiny baubles, silky ribbons, tape wrapped cups, red lentil pasta and bead strings make a wonderful red/ white/ silver feast for the senses! Just gather what you have, add it to a tray with scoops and containers and it will be an instant hit!
SLIME
Wonderful as a gift as kids always love it, and very easy to DIY! We have sparkly snow slime,
and Christmas tree slime recipes here on the Imagination Tree.
A frozen ice ring containing sparkly ornaments and bead strings is an amazing investigative sensory play activity!
Did you know you can make your own fake snow from just 2 ingredients? It feels amazing and can be moulded into shapes too! Find my snow dough recipe here on Imagination Tree.
FINE MOTOR SKILLS
There are so many easy ways to practise working on fine motor skills using ornaments, sensory materials and DIY games from recycling. Here are some favourites we have done over the years!
Christmas tree leaf kebab threading! Brilliant as part of a scavenger hunt in the woods and for threading, stacking and ordering by size. Brilliant for little learners and easily adapted to increase the challenge level for older ones too.
Wrap elastic bands, pom poms and bead strings around painted pine cone “Christmas trees” to improve dexterity. They look gorgeous as decorations too!
Make a DIY cardboard Christmas tree geo board using everyday items!
These pipe cleaner and bead threaded Christmas tree shapes are so simple even for little hands to complete, and a great finger workout!
MATHS ACTIVITIES
There are so many simple and fun ways to create some learning through play activities using Christmas themed props and ornaments! Like this Christmas tree addition game!
And this multiplication version using dot stickers for older kids too!
LITERACY ACTIVITIES
Similarly there are so many easy ways to adapt these themes for learning phonics, sight words, storytelling and writing!
This Snowman Sight Word Bingo game is fun!
Sensory writing trays are a brilliant way to practise handwriting, phonemes, names and sight words! We have an entire collection of Sensory Writing Tray Themes and Ideas here on the Imagination Tree! Here are the best Christmas related ones.
Gingerbread Sensory Writing Tray is possibly the cutest ever with those little gingerbread word and phoneme cards!
And the incredible colours of the candy cane sensory writing tray with the candy cane as a mark making tool, makes it a sure winner!
The Christmas Tree shaped tray with sparkly green sensory filler makes this awesome and appealing too!
Sparkly snow is an exciting alternative!
A Christmas themed role play post office gives so many opportunities for playful literacy!
Arctic Small world in a suitcase is an amazing DIY toy, gift or small world play set up to create! You can read about how we made it here.
And it’s very easy to create a nativity scene for retelling the story using playmobil figures, a cardboard box and some hay!
IDEAS FOR BABY PLAY
Christmas time offers the most amazing range of visually appealing, tactile and noisy sensory materials in the form of decorations, tinsel, jingly bells and more! Simply present them safely and keep a close watch as baby explores the materials, using a stocking, boxes, feely bags and baskets.
This Christmas Sensory Basket is a great place to start!
Add those same items to a stocking for a sensory feely-bag alternative!
These Christmas sensory test tubes are a great way for babies to look closely at smaller materials they couldn’t otherwise touch. Filled with beads, mini pine cones, rosemary spread, glitter water, sparkly rice and pretend snow!
Looking for a fun advent tradition for your kids that teaches KINDNESS and EMPATHY? Come and discover all about the Kindness Elves tradition that I created for my own kids, which is now a story and kit you can buy too! Find the original post about it here and the Kindness Elves shop here.
Still not enough of the best Christmas crafts and activities for kids?! Check out our FULL CHRISTMAS ARCHIVES here!
I hope you have loved this bumper selection of the BEST Christmas crafts and activities for kids! Have a WONDERFUL Christmas season and enjoy plenty of new ideas and traditions this year!
I have been involved with parent and early childhood education for over thirty years. I just wanted to tell how impressed I am with your ideas. Inventive, clever, educational, colorful, and best of all, age-appropriate.
That is so kind, thank you! Teaching creatively is my passion for sure!xx