One of the ways to involve children in Christmas preparations and keep them busy during the holiday break is to make Christmas crafts. Free Christmas crafts require only a few miscellaneous supplies that you may already have on hand. Many of these crafts can be given as gifts to friends or relatives or kept and used as Christmas decorations in your home.

Handprint Reindeer
Hands are just about the perfect shape for reindeer antlers in Christmas art projects. Children will also enjoy comparing their hand size in future years when they find these crafts in the Christmas decoration box. To make handprint reindeer, children should trace their hands onto construction paper, cut them out, and glue them to a reindeer head shape. Some ideas for the head of the reindeer are to either use a small brown paper bag to make a puppet or to trace the shape of the child’s foot, cut it out and use it as the head.

Paper Bag Stocking
Children can make their own stockings out of large brown paper grocery bags. With the printing or advertising on the inside, children should cut out two matching stocking shapes and glue them together along the outside, making sure to leave the top open. The stocking can then be decorated with markers, construction paper cut-outs or other craft supplies. Children who like sewing can punch holes around the edges of the stocking and sew through them with yarn.

Cardboard Tube Crafts
Empty toilet paper rolls can be used as the foundation for many free Christmas crafts. Cut out details from colored construction paper and glue them to the toilet paper rolls to transform them into angels, snowmen, Santa Claus, shepherds or other Christmas figures.

Pie Tin Ornaments
After using a disposable foil pie tin, it can be washed and recycled into some Christmas ornaments. Children can cut out Christmas shapes such as stars, bells, trees and angels from the bottom of the pie tin. A hole punched in the top allows them to be hung with string or an ornament hook. If children would like to create designs in the ornament, they should place a magazine under it to protect the work surface and then press hard objects into the ornament to leave imprints.