How2Day: Christmas Games & Crafts for Kids

Watching the face of a child light up with Christmas joy can be a gift itself. Sharing crafts and games with your children brings laughter to your holiday while beginning family traditions for new generations. You might even find yourself feeling like a kid again.

Let your children exercise their imaginations to design the family's holiday cards. Embellish half sheets of card stock with family photos, glitter, rubber stamps, markers, stickers, or beads and charms to create a memorable letter for families and friends.

Children of all ages can make family keepsake ornaments. For the simplest choice, you can purchase balsa wood shapes. Younger children can color them with water-based markers, while older siblings can use paint pens or acrylic paints. Cover foam balls with aluminum glitter or wrapped in ribbon and studded with beads on corsage pins. Iron crayon shavings between waxed paper sheets and cut them into holiday shapes for "stained glass" window ornaments.

Add fragrance and decoration at the same time with cinnamon-applesauce dough ornaments. Mix equal parts ground cinnamon and applesauce to form a dough you can roll out and shape with cookie cutters. Air-dry or bake them in a low oven to dry and harden them These cutouts add a rustic look to your wreaths and trees; you also can embellish the cutouts with paint and beads.

Small jars, shrink plastic and some glitter make personalized snow globes to display or share as gifts. Children draw and color holiday shapes on the plastic, which you bake to shrink them to fit your jars. Add water and glitter, secure the lid to the jar and shake up a "blizzard."

Put a new twist on the traditional party game by playing "Pin the pom-pom on Santa's hat." Blindfold the children, give them a spin around and see who can put the cotton ball on the end of Santa's red hat. Alternately, try to place the red dot on the reindeer's nose.

A quick relay race can release extra energy and give everyone a reason to giggle. Pile two sets of boxes, precut gift wrap, tape and ribbons about 15 feet from the starting line. Each person runs to the pile, wraps and ties ribbons on a box, and races to drop it in the team's Santa gift bag. Once the gift is in the bag, the next person repeats the process. Continue until everybody has a turn. The team that gets all the boxes wrapped and ready for Santa first wins the race.

Help children extend their imagination and recall with this game. Start the game by saying, "I am going to the North Pole, and I'm taking blank." Fill in the blank with the name of a gift. For example, you might say, "I'm going to the North Pole, and I'm taking an apple." The next person could say, "I'm going to the North Pole, and I'm taking an apple and a dinosaur." Each person repeats the gifts the players before have named, in order, and adds another. Make it more challenging by adding the rule that gift names must begin with the next letter of the alphabet.

Suspend a wreath from a tree branch or door facing. Children line up 5 to 10 feet away, and try to toss beanbags through the center of the wreath. Everyone who succeeds get a Christmas cookie.

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