Christmas Crafts: Ideas for entertaining Toddlers

Christmas Noisemaker
Put uncooked beans and popped popcorn into a clean, dry frozen-juice container. Place the metal lid on top and glue or tape securely. You can cover the juice container with red or green construction paper and decorate with markers or stickers.

Magnetic Christmas Tree
Gather ten or more lids from frozen-juice cans or baby-food jars. Cut small circles of colored felt to fit the lids. Use lots of green and some red, yellow, and blue, and glue the felt to the lid (inside the lid for baby-food jars, outside the lid for juice cans). Glue a magnet strip to each lid.
Arrange the magnets in the shape of a Christmas tree on your refrigerator door, or let your toddler make designs of his or her own.

Cotton Ball Snowman
Cut three circles in different sizes from clear contact paper. Staple the contact paper, backing side up, to construction paper to make a snowman shape. Peel off the backing and let your child stick cotton balls to the contact paper to cover the snowman. Use construction paper to add a hat, scarf, and facial features and glue to the snowman.