- Working on crafts can keep your kids occupied during holidayschildren image by Renata Osinska from Fotolia.com
Holidays are a convenient time for you and your children to make crafts together. Often, these crafts provide opportunities to teach your children about holiday traditions as well as decorations for your home. Most of the materials needed are available at craft or fabric stores. - Cut out felt in gingerbread-man shapes and give them to your children to decorate. You can use a cookie cutter to trace the proper shape if necessary. Provide kids with small buttons, pieces of rick-rack and googly eyes to decorate their gingerbread men. Secure these items with glue. You can also poke a small hole in the top of the gingerbread man's head and use a wire hook to turn it into an ornament for a Christmas tree.
- Create the Star of David with wooden craft sticks by forming two triangles with three craft sticks each. Place the triangles over each other and rotate one until you have a star with six points. Glue the two triangles together. Use acrylic paint to paint the triangles white and blue for Hanukkah. Use five sticks and paint green and red for a five-point Christmas star. Decorate either star with rhinestones, sequins or glitter to help it catch the light. Glue a loop of ribbon or cord to the back of one of the star's points to secure it to a hook or hand directly on the tree.
- Make a "leprechaun trap" with your kids for St. Patrick's Day. Cut the top out of a small cardboard box and cover the box with green paper. Have your kids decorate the box with gold glitter or shamrocks. Draw a sign on the box indicating to a wandering leprechaun that there is gold inside. Have your kids draw and cut out a rainbow and glue one end to your box. Remind your kids of the old adage that there is always gold at the end of a rainbow and tell them it may help attract some mischievous leprechauns. Take some coins and put them on your table. Tie one coin to a piece of twine and tie the other end of the twine to an empty toilet paper roll. Prop the decorated box face down on the table with the coins underneath it. Your leprechaun trap is now complete. Before your children wake up the next morning you can remove the toilet paper roll and coin and tell them that the leprechaun got away.
- This craft is easy to do with your children and uses very few materials. String red, gold or silver beads onto a green pipe cleaner so that they are about 1 inch apart. Measure 3 inches and bend the pipe cleaner back on itself. Bend again at 2 ¾ inches and again at 2 ½ inches. Continue bending and reducing the measurements to the end of the pipe cleaner. The result is a zigzag pine-tree shape. String a star-shaped button at the end of the pipe cleaner and bend the wire to secure both the button and a wire loop to hang the ornament.
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