Clearly Christmas: A Kids Christmas Craft Party in Se7en Steps.

The wonderful thing about craft parties is that the kids do the work. They really enjoy, given the materials, the freedom to create whatever they like. Basically as long as you have glitter you have the tools for a Christmas Craft Party.

Now a Christmas Craft Party can take on two themes…

• A Gifty Gathering: My older kids love making gifts and they are quite able to make worthy gifts. A gift making party is fantastic opportunity for them to go off and create a secret supply of gifts. The trick with a gifty gathering is that kids like to keep what they make – so always let them make two of each craft. Not only does that cement the skill but it makes it is so much easier to share.
• A Divine Decorating Do: Little kids love making decorations, especially if they can be popped up on display instantly! It can be as simple or as complicated as you like… glitter on sea shells, popsicle sticks glued together to make stars… just providing a table with glitter, pipe cleaners and a couple of fabric scraps… and your guests will be totally happy.

Step 1: Invitation: This is easy, just use a gift tag, pop the party details (time, date and “dress for mess”) on the back and you are good to go!

Step 2: A Party Starter: Since the kids are bound to be creating a whole lot of goodies to take home with them they will need a container – give everyone a blank gift bag to decorate with stickers while they wait for all their friends to arrive.

Step 3: Party Games: The excitement of creating is usually enough to keep a crafty party going, but with a Christmas theme there are a lot of easy games you can play… Relays work well: Get teams to wrap and unwrap a huge box the fastest, decorate a small tree with tinsel and baubles the quickest, whatever – if it involves rushing and dashing and racing your games will be a hit. Also if you have planned some potentially messy projects now would be the time to get them outdoors and do them. Things like tie-dying and candle making really work better in the open air. And some crafts cry out to be done early on so that they transport home more easily at the end of the day.

Step 4: Party Craft: If you are looking for gifts for kids to make look no further: Christmas gifts for Kids to make. and if you are looking for decorations for kids to make you can’t do better than The Crafty Crow… Just this week we have made a heap of decorations thanks to the Crafty Crow… and after all that if you are still desperate for more ideas then Family Fun has a dedicated Christmas Page.

Step 5: Party Pinata: Any pinata is a good pinata at a craft party. You can choose from a taped up gift bag to mini-pinatas – you can find how easy to follow instructions here. The point is stuff them with little Christmas Crafty tools: little glitter tubes, sparkly pipe cleaners, beads, bits of felt and so on.

Step 6: Party Food: This is very easy! Good party food means one food and one beverage. Make a bazillion Christmas cookies in advance and let them decorate them with icing and sprinkles.

Let them keep a couple of special ones to take home and munch the rest all up. Choose a quick and easy beverage and you are done! If you need to insert a snack into your crafting then go ahead and make some edible garlands… for a decorating party or sweetie necklaces for a gift making party.

Step 7: Party Treasure Hunt: Finally the mad dash! The promise of this to come will help even the most lingering artist to finish up and get ready to go… Hide tiny Christmas decorations and let everyone bring you one…as soon as they bring you a decoration they can have their goody bag, that they decorated… packed with their crafty creations.

You are done – until next year – it is a tradition they won’t give up for anything!

I popped this post on the Works for Me Wednesday site – go and have a look there for all sorts of tips.