Kid Made Christmas Gifts and Decorations: Glitter, Beads, and Lollipops!

A quick and easy kid-friendly craft for the holidays include glitter ornaments. I used small scraps of dark mat board as a base, but you can use card cardboard or even metal concentrated orange juice lids spray painted the color of your choice. Glue the ribbon to the back (hot glue is quick), and then draw a picture in glue on the front to cover with glitter. Stars, snowflakes, snowmen, wreaths, trees, angels, ball ornaments, candy canes, menorahs, candles, etc. Just be sure to keep it simple and only do one color at a time. Kids are amazed the first time they shake the extra glitter onto a sheet of paper and their shape is revealed.

Instead of ornaments, you might even make initials of family members to use for gift tags next year.

Pipe cleaners (Am I supposed to be calling them fuzzy craft sticks?) and beads are also easy ways to keep kids busy making ornaments. Red and white alternating beads can be bent into candy canes on half a pipe cleaner. Or white beads, with a figure eight twist in the center could help make a simple snowman shape. Green beads with bends to make a tree shape could also pass for an ornament (maybe a yellow bead in the center with a twist to make the star stay in place would help clarify).

I found that most of my young students were more interested in making beaded jewelry for their moms then ornaments, but either way, you've got a way to keep kids happy, engaged, and thinking of others.

Lollipop decorations are easy for kids to make with paper plates, and wooden dowels. It's just a matter of using markers to draw spirals, pinwheels, stripes or polka dots on the bottoms of the plates and then gluing the tops of the plates together with the dowel inside. Hot glue probably works best for this one too.

Once cellophane is wrapped around and tied with a ribbon or twist tie. the lollipop believability factor goes way up. Pop them in the ground or planters for outdoor events or in vases for indoor parties.

If you're done celebrating for this year, plan ahead for next year by grabbing on sale items now or even making special decorations to be packed up with the magic about to go into the attic until the final months of next year.