Easy Holiday Crafts for Toddlers

Spring

• Valentine’s Day on February 14th provides an ideal opportunity to teach toddlers about the heart shape. You can create animals out of construction paper, using heart shapes for the faces, ears and paws and give them as valentine’s cards. St. Patrick’s Day on March 17th is a great time to expand on shape knowledge by making green construction paper shamrock leaves of different sizes and then assembling them, using the available shapes to teach sorting skills. You can also count the number of shamrock leaves as you glue them to the shamrock stems to promote counting skills.

Summer

• A nice project for either Mother’s Day or Father’s Day is to hang a flower that you make using the traced and cut out handprints of each family member. The handprint shapes are then overlapped, glued together and attached to a stem created from construction paper. On Independence Day, you can show toddlers the letter “F” for flag, fourth and fireworks. You can help them draw pictures of the flag and fireworks while they watch them at night.

Fall

• Halloween on the 31st of October is a great period for the introduction of new letters. Draw pictures of bats, cats and owls while writing “B’s,” “C’s,” and “O’s.” Bring children to a farm to choose their own pumpkins to paint with faces or animals, and play counting and sorting games with the different types of candy you collect. Draw Thanksgiving turkeys using traced handprints and decorate them with crayons.

Winter

• Christmas and other seasonal celebrations are memorable holidays for most children, and many appropriate artistic activities keep little hands busy during these colder months. Classic crafts include stringing up popcorn for the tree and making chains to hang up out of construction paper cut into strips and stapled together. Adult supervision is required, which allows for parental bonding time with children. Candy cane reindeer with glued on eyes and noses with pipe cleaner antlers are also very simple to make. Gingerbread houses can take an entire afternoon to make and can be enjoyed by the whole family as a holiday dessert.