8 Easy Christmas Activities

Christmas is an intense time of year. Made even worse when you scroll through Instagram and see all these amazing parents coming up with all these amazing Christmas activity ideas for their kids to be doing on the run up to the big day.

I get it. Where do they find the time? and how do they have the energy? But, seriously there’s nothing like a fantastically curated Instagram feed to make you feel like an inadequate parent. Especially at this time of year. That’s why I’ve been cheating. Activities needn’t be stressful or complicated. In fact with a four year old that gets bored easily I need quick and easy but with full child satisfaction. So, here are my tried and tested easy activities that don’t take a lot of time or energy to prepare, have satisfaction factor for the kids and don’t involve too much tidying up (because we already have enough of that to do.)

Number One: Snowflakes. Possibly the easiest of Christmas crafts and probably the cheapest. All you need is printer paper, coloured pencils and scissors. Now my child is only four. So the way we do it is like two little elves in Santa’s workshop. He colours the pages in as many colours as he likes (mostly in scribble format) and I then fold the paper and cut out the snowflakes. We then proceed to stick them to windows, walls or hang them from cotton from the ceiling. Easy as pie and they look great after. Plus they add to the Christmas décor.

Number Two: Making Gingerbread men. Sounds messy and time consuming right? Well guess what it’s not. In fact I found the cheats way to make gingerbread men that will keep the kids happy and avoid lots of mess. I brought us some ready to roll and bake gingerbread dough. Really that’s all you need but the kids will want to decorate them… so all your rally need apart from the gingerbread dough is a box of icing sugar that you can mix with a little warm water to make an icing and some sweets or sprinkles. You could also add a little food colouring to the icing if you wanted. The kids will have great fun rolling out and cutting the shapes. Then you can pop them in the oven and decorate them once they have cooled. Easy.

Number Three: Fairy cakes. Again they don’t need to be messy. In fact once you have brought the the icing sugar (you did this above for the gingerbread men) and you have the sprinkles to decorate them all you need is some plain ready made fairy cakes which most supermarkets sell. I got a pack of 12 fairy cakes for £1. My son loved making up the icing, spooning the mixture onto them and adding the decoration. Simple, easy and they actually lasted about three days! (Shocking I know)

Number Four: Christmas decorations. Christmas is a great time of year to get the craft box out. But all that cutting can get a bit messy. So here’s my suggestion. Felt, glue, jewels and glitter glue. (Although glitter glue is not essential) Felt is easy and safe for young children to use. Cut out bauble shapes or stars etc and then simply cut out little shapes from the offcuts. Then let them decorate the Christmas shapes with opposite coloured felt and jewels adding dollops of glitter glue for added sparkle. If your kids are a little too small for gluing themselves then have them place the shapes onto the bauble and you stick them down after. We barely had any mess to clear up after we made an elf house decoration and my son loved the outcome.

Number Five: Paper chains. An oldy by a goody. But ready cut packs of paper chains or if you already have some coloured paper then cut it into strips and glue together to make beautiful paper chains to hang from the ceiling.

Number Six: Paper Lanterns. Another easy craft that avoids too much mess and is very effective. All you really need is paper and imitation candles. For some extra prettiness during the day kids can colour or decorate the lantern before you fold, cut and stick it together.

Number Seven: Christmas sun catchers: This is a slightly messier craft and will more than likely require some sort of sheet to protect the surfaces from glue. But otherwise it’s fairly simple. Cut out a paper shape from black paper or card. (Also cut out its middle) stick coloured tissue paper into the centre like a window and add some string to hang. Stick to a window and let the light shine through.

Number Eight: Pine Cone Christmas trees: About as messy as the above depending on what you use. But get yourself some pine cones (foraged or brought) paint them with green paint and sprinkle over some glitter. You could hang these from a tree or make a lovely Garland from them.

Christmas is a wonderful time of year. But it can also be very expensive with little time to spare. I hope I have inspired you to get creating with your kids on a small budget and a small amount of time.

Merry Christmas.

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Charlotte Fay is a writer and Poet from Kent, UK. You can find her on Instagram: @charlofay and her poetry books (Soul Insights & I’ve just had a baby) are available from Amazon in paperback and ebook.