8 Christmas Craft Ideas to Add a Festive Feel to Classroom Activities

Does the end of the year mean Christmas craft time in your classroom? As the siren call of the summer holidays sounds for teachers, it seems every classroom shines with a fine coat of glitter too. If you haven’t got your Christmas craft for the kids in the classroom sorted yet, you’re in luck!

The Teach Starter teacher team has gathered our favourite Christmas craft ideas for celebrating the holiday in the classroom. We’ve even added some options for children who do not celebrate Christmas, so your classroom festivities will include everyone. Best of all, you’ve probably got everything you need already in your supply store room for the Christmas craft ideas on this teacher-approved list!

Christmas Craft Ideas for Teachers

Create a Christmas Craft Bucket List

Will you be doing different activities each day? Creating a Christmas Craft Bucket List is a novel way to prepare, store and select activities. Here’s how it works:

1. Write the names of your chosen activities on painted pop sticks and place them in a bucket (ours is from Ikea).
2. Prepare your photocopying and gather your supplies for each activity.
3. Place the gear into bags.
4. Each day, ask a student helper to draw a stick out of the bucket and SURPRISE your class with exciting new Christmas craft activities each day!

 

Design Your Own Christmas Trees

Call on your students’ engineering skills and add a sustainability element to your classroom Christmas craft activities with a design challenge that’s got a holiday twist. Pull out cardboard, buttons, ribbon, old magazines and other craft items from your supply room, and challenge students to create their own trees. This craft is heaps of fun, and it requires students to use their problem-solving skills!

Do you want to offer a variation for students who don’t celebrate Christmas? Encourage them to use the various items to create a summer-themed item instead to prepare for the holidays ahead. Perhaps they can make a bucket for the beach?

Create Baubles for the Christmas Tree

There’s nothing quite like a traditional Christmas craft, and creating baubles for the Christmas tree is as traditional as it can get. We’ve even made it easy with printable bauble templates that can form the base of the craft. You can choose from Santa, his reindeer or a simple and traditional round bauble template. Or you can print all three and allow students to choose their favourite!

Before your students create the bauble, why not add a social-emotional element to the activity? Have your students add a sentence about what they are grateful for this holiday on the strips of paper they will use in crafting. Once they are done, move on to the craft!

Looking for a non-Christmas alternative? Teach Starter has partnered with Wingaru kids to create a series of First Nations-themed ornaments that can simply be created during craft time without being hung from a tree! A variety of Australian animals are included in the set. Choose from any of the following options:

• Aboriginal four-pointed boomerangs and decorative seed pods
• Bandicoot
• Koala
• Cockatoo
• Wombat
• Kangaroo
• Star
• Turtle

Build an Exploding Gift Box

What’s better than a gift box? A gift box that explodes, of course! This fun activity brings origami elements to your classroom crafting, and students can fill their boxes with small trinkets for a friend or family member.

Don’t forget to print out our Christmas Decorative Square Templates and read our full instructions!

Printable Christmas Surprise Picture Craft Activity

This may be one of our students’ favourite crafts of all time! Using overhead transparency sheets and our fun printable surprise picture template, students can magically create black and white pictures that will be filled with colour faster than you can say Christmas crackers.

Make Christmas Snow Globes

There won’t be snow for Christmas — at least not here in Australia — but that doesn’t mean you can’t bring a bit of the fun from all of the holiday movies into your classroom craft activities. Snow globes are simple to make with recycled jars, and shaking them is a great mindfulness activity.

Take a peek at the video below to find out how to make your own!

You can print out Santa in beach attire or his traditional red suit, a Christmas tree or a non-holiday snowman for students to include with these snow globe templates.

Build Cozy Cabins

These little winter cabins are a favourite with teachers who want a craft that has a Christmas feel but can be entirely secular to embrace inclusivity in the classroom. This craft involves creating small cabin structures and adding a small flameless tealight in the centre, and they are sure to light up your classroom this festive season.

Print a cabin craft template for each student! They will love creating a sparkling village with all of their huts put together.

Prep Puppets for the Season

Your students are about to have heaps of free time ahead of them after the end of the school year. Provide them with a creative way to fill the time by creating holiday puppets out of paper bags.

 

This friendly Christmas puppet crew is easy to make.

1. Fold a regular-sized, brown paper bag in half vertically and glue the two sides together.
2. This forms a long, rectangular shape with a hole at the bottom for students to use as a puppet.
3. Colour the cutouts on the template.
4. Design your puppet’s outfit using a variety of craft materials.
5. Cut out all of the pieces you need.
6. Glue the template pieces and clothing pieces onto the paper bag!

Want to make the holiday crew above? Download our Paper Bag Christmas Puppet Making Activity to set yourself (and your class) up with heaps of holiday characters. This pirate paper bag puppet is a perfect alternative for kids who are not celebrating Christmas.