Creative Christmas Crafts And Activities For Young Children‍

Wondering what to do with your spare time this festive break? Luckily we’ve made a list of Christmas crafts and activities that you and your children can do to keep yourselves occupied and having fun. 

As the holidays loom ever closer, the days are much shorter and the weather is much colder. This brings some lovely opportunities to celebrate the season with some fun activities. 

Here is a guide to activities you can do with your children in between all the Christmas festivities.

• Make A Bird Feeder
• Winter Walks
• Painting With Nature
• Ice Painting
• Winter Soup
• Pinecone Science
• Sorting Collections
• Playing With Sticks
• Winter Stories

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Make A Bird Feeder

During the winter, birds in the UK need extra feeding and lots of fresh water to help keep their energy levels up. To assist them in maintaining their hydration, you could potentially use a dish or bowl from home you could create a bird drinking station. Before you start making a bird feeder, bird food often contains nuts, so ensure you’re being safe if any allergens are involved. If you wish to make a bird feeder itself, here is a little guide on how to do so: 

• Find a recyclable 2-litre plastic bottle.
• Cut a hole near the bottom on one of the sides, about 9cm in size.
• Attach a strong piece of string to form a handle that can tie onto a tree.
• Fill the bottle with bird seeds/bird food.
• Hang in a tree somewhere visible for the children so they can view if they get any visitors.
• There are many versions of ‘Seed Cakes’, ‘Pine Cone Feeders’ and ‘Bird Food Muffin’ recipes available online. 

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During January, The Royal Society of the Protection of Birds runs ‘The Big Garden Birdwatch’ and it’s a great opportunity to encourage bird spotting and recognition of garden birds for the children, developing their vocabulary and language skills.

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Winter Walks

Don’t let the cold, frosty weather stop you from getting out and doing some exercise and getting some fresh air. Wrap up in your cosy clothes, hat, gloves and scarf and go out to explore your local area and parks with a winter walk. To make it fun and engaging for the children you could turn it into an interactive scavenger hunt! Here are a few tasks you could include:

• Find some icy, crunchy leaves to step on or look at the cool sparkly patterns, and encourage the children to use a phone/iPad to record their findings.
• Collect items such as pine cones, sticks, leaves or any unusual stones or pebbles you find along the way.
• Make lists of things to spot whilst on your walk, making sure to add numerical values to each element, i.e. spot five birds on your walk, to help develop their mathematical skills.
• Take paper and crayons with you to create leaf or tree bark rubbings.

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Also, why not have some messy fun? Who doesn’t love a puddle? We know it can be a nightmare when children jump in a puddle with their everyday clothes and shoes on, however, in winter with wellies and an all-in-one suit or waterproof trousers, it’s great fun to jump in a puddle! How long until the water disappears? Where did the water go? Look in the puddle, what can you see? All great questions you could prompt your children with to ignite their curiosity and help them develop a better understanding of the world around them.

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Painting With Nature 

On your walks out and about, you could collect some twigs or small branches. Natural objects like these are great for mark-making when dipped in food colouring or paint. Our Art Specialist, Majka, uses sticks and twigs in lots of creative ways with the children when she visits them at the nurseries. Finding fun and innovative ways of using natural objects, like wrapping the sticks in wool can aid the development of the children’s fine motor skills. Even painting the actual sticks is also a fun activity and lets the children get creative and make unique natural sculptures.

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Ice Painting

With the cold, frosty weather, it will be easy to find some ice in the garden, or even left outside overnight. Have you ever found icy sheets in a park or in your garden? Our children love it when we find these in our nursery gardens, formed from puddles or in tuff trays left out by our practitioners for the children to discover the next morning. These blocks or sheets of ice offer a unique opportunity to try some ‘ice painting’. Using either food colouring or children’s paints, children can use brushes to experiment with icy watery painting. Watch as the colours mix and the ice melts, the children will love it!

 

Make Some Winter Soup 

Winter is the perfect time to take children to shop for root vegetables and make a healthy nutritious meal. There are not many meals better than a hearty soup to warm you up in the wintertime. Below is a guide for how you could make your soup, all whilst keeping your child engaged! Adult supervision is super important throughout this recipe to ensure proper safety measures are being adhered to.

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• Encourage choosing the most colourful options. Red onions, orange carrots and red peppers are some great examples. 
• Once home help your child safely chop (see recommended safety knives) the vegetables into small chunks and add to a saucepan.
• Next, you will need to add the stock and simmer the soup. You can blend the mixture if you prefer a creamy, smooth soup. 
• Serve it with some crusty bread and you’ll have a delicious lunch for a cold day!

 

Pinecone Science!

Pinecones can still be found at this time of year, the best place to look for them is under Conifer Trees in parks and gardens. Look for pinecones scattering the floor beneath the trees. Once collected, try this simple science experiment!

• Add an ‘open’ pine cone to a glass of cold water and leave for two to three hours.
• Pop a ‘closed’ pine cone somewhere warm for an hour or so. What happened to the pine cones? 
• Try these experiments by leaving pine cones outside/inside and encourage children to talk about the differences? Why do you think the pinecones opened or closed?

 

Sorting Collections

We believe matching and sorting in various ways is one of the most engaging and influential ways that children can develop their early mathematic skills. Children learn basic concepts of counting, classifying and introducing mathematical language such as ‘more’ and less’ during their time at Fennies. Collect a selection of natural found objects such as; pine cones, shells, leaves, stones, twigs etc and encourage the children to put these into ‘sets’ or groups. There are lots of mathematical questions which arise from sorting, these could sound like:

• How many do you think are in each set?
• Which set has the most/least?
• Is there another way we could sort these items? (i.e. by colour or by size).

 

Playing With Sticks

Sticks are one of the most open-ended natural resources we can easily find and utilise! Sticks are good for:

• Measuring/Comparing - Line up a collection of sticks you’ve found; Which one is the longest? Which one is the shortest?
• Create A Stickman: Using wool or string, and a collection of different sized twigs can the children wrap sticks together to create a stick person?
• Play Pooh Sticks - Go to your local park and encourage your child to find an unusual stick, then find one for yourself! Making sure your sticks are recognisable, stand on the bridge and throw the sticks into the river as it flows under. Run to the other side…….which stick will come out first and be the winner?

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This is just the beginning of the fun you could have with sticks. Find more “sticky” things to do here!

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Read A Winter Story

There are lots of lovely books which feature winter themes such as cosy bear caves, hibernation and weather. Reading to children of all ages is essential for their early literacy skills, here’s just a few you could read:

• Winter By, Allie Busby
• Can’t You Sleep Little Bear? By, Martin Waddell
• The Very Hungry Caterpillars First Winter By, Eric Carle 
• A Walk In Winter By, Rose Cobden

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These are just a few ideas of what you could do this Christmas to have some festive fun. If you give any of these activities a go, we'd love to see them! Don't forget to tag us in your pictures on our Instagram! 

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