Graham Cracker Houses

Instead of baking gingerbread, buy a box of graham crackers and just do the fun part - decorating!

The basics: You will need a box of graham crackers, a container of icing, and an assortment of candies for decorating. Also, a 1/4 tsp of cream of tartar mixed in a cup of icing will help the icing dry hard enough to hold your cracker house together.

For a base used cardboard covered in aluminum foil. To pipe your icing onto your house, cut the corner off a plastic bag. Once you have your walls assembled you have two options.
1. You can cover the house with icing and stick the candies on, or
2. use your icing like glue and stick individual candies on the house.
If you go for option one, be sure to only ice one cracker at a time or the icing may get too hard for the candy to stick to it before you get all your decorating done.

Snowman door wreath

Pick up 3 wreaths from your local dollar store or craft store. Tie them together to form your snowman and add a hat, scarf and mittens. The totally homemade version goes like this: Get an old cardboard box. Cut one big circle out of cardboard. Draw 3 circles inside each other on your cardboard circle, so that it looks like a dartboard. Then cut along each line. This leaves you with 3 circles to make your wreaths for the snowman. Punch holes in the circles and tie them together to make your snowman. Let your kids glue cotton balls onto the snowman, then dress him in your scarf set and hang on the wall or your front door. If you make a smaller one, then your kids can use construction paper to make the accessories for the snowman and glue them on. See a picture here.

Paper Bag Puppets

Make paper bag puppets. You can do this by decorating the bags with construction paper cutouts or get more creative with other art supplies. (ex: buttons, yarn, glitter, etc.) Need more help?

Try making farm animals like a cow, pig, sheep, or chicken.
Make domestic animals like a cat, dog, or bunny.
Make zoo animals like a lion, penguin, or bear.
Make people.

Paper Dolls

For your craft time make paper dolls. You can either design them yourself, or get some help online. (paper doll link) Keep it simple for the younger ones - maybe make a simple bear. You can use colored construction paper for clothes, or plain paper and let your kids color them.

Pictures from Shapes

Get out construction paper and glue. Cut out a bunch of circles, squares, and triangles from different colored paper. Then let your kids glue the shapes onto a sheet of construction paper. They can either do a collage or use the shapes to create pictures, like a tangram (a tangram uses 7 geometric pieces to create different forms) only with as many shapes and pieces as they want.