Guest Post - Making Our Own Christmas Cards

 


Homemade Christmas cards always go down well and making them with the kids can become a lovely family tradition. Shelly has included lots of great ideas for making your own Christmas cards in this guest post.

Collage Activities with a Mixed-Age Group


Ideas for Homemade Christmas Cards

By Shelly

Making our own Christmas cards has become a bit of a family tradition. We have been doing it since the kids were very young and could only just scribble. They have always loved being involved and enjoyed giving out or posting the cards that they made. Each year we tend to try something new with a few of the cards and also stick to some of our favourites from past years.

One of the kids favourites is the Merry Christmas colouring card. I first printed this out for the kids a few years ago because I liked the fact that they would be colouring in letters that spelled out Christmas (great for my younger one who was still learning his letters then and for my oldest to reinforce the spelling of Christmas). Plus it is a cute card. I have lost count on how many time we have printed this card out - but it is still requested by the kids. We also have made a slight variation on this card – instead of printing out the colouring card we printed out the colouring page (A4 size), the kids coloured it in and we cut out along the border and then glued it onto some folded A3 card. Perfect for kids who want to make super-sized cards.

Supersized Merry Christmas card using our colouring page
Supersized Merry Christmas card using the Merry Christmas colouring page

This year I had the idea of printing out the Father Christmas tree decorations and the Christmas colouring booklet as something for my son to colour in, thinking we could then cut out the pages and stick them onto cards.

Christmas colouring booklet could be used in Christmas cards
Christmas colouring booklet could be used in Christmas cards

Colouring in the Father Christmas tree decorations
Colouring in the Father Christmas tree decorations

But as usual my daughter had her own plan. She ended up copying the Father Christmas from the tree decoration page and drew her own on a few cards. I love the fact that she is getting more confident with her drawing and trying to copy all kinds of pictures.

Creating her own Christmas cards by copying the Father Christmas tree decorations page
Creating her own Christmas cards by copying the Father Christmas tree decorations page

One of her finished Father Christmas cards
One of her finished Father Christmas cards

You could also print out a few of Activity Village's Christmas Learn to Draw pages (there is a Father Christmas and a Christmas tree).

And then of course there is one of our favourite ways to craft together – templates. This year we stuck to three templates – the simple Christmas tree template, Christmas bell template and the teardrop Christmas tree template. Just to mention that the layered Christmas tree template also works really well for Christmas Cards; we used it a lot last year.

I love using the templates as younger kids can trace around them to get a great shape and then they can decorate them as they want. Tissue paper works really well with the Christmas tree templates.

Tissue paper Christmas tree card
Tissue paper Christmas tree card

And also different coloured paper - it could be patterned paper or plain.

Christmas cards made using templates and coloured paper
Christmas cards made using templates and coloured paper

Oh and don’t forget the glitter! Side note: if your kids get very excited about using LOTS of glitter it might be a good idea to use trays - that way lots of the excess glitter ends up on the tray and makes the clean up a little bit easier. alternatively, glitter paper also works well. And I must admit glitter Christmas cards do look festive!

Glitter Christmas bells cards
Glitter Christmas bells cards

Glitter teardrop Christmas tree cards
Glitter teardrop Christmas tree cards

Collage Activities with a Mixed-Age Group

This is a guest post from Shelly. Shelly is a home educating parent of two children aged 6 and 9. She blogs at ofamily learning together where she shares ideas on their different learning activities including lots of hands-on maths, arts and crafts and anything else that is part of their home educating lifestyle.

You can find more guest posts by Shelly, and a list of all our guest posts, here.

 

Guest Post - Making Our Own Christmas Cards
Saturday, 9th December 2017

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