31 Festive Santa Crafts for Kids
Christmas is a time of joy, family, and prepping. Many parents end up with anxious kids who are eager and rambunctious to celebrate the year’s biggest day.
We’ve found 31 Santa crafts for kids to do in the days before Christmas. These crafts inspire creativity, encourage a love of art, and offer hands-on holiday-themed entertainment.
Grab your craft kit, scissors, glue, and a pencil, and get ready to get festive for Christmas with these fun Santa Claus crafts.
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Supply List for Santa Craft
Below are some of the craft materials you’ll need to make the butterfly crafts. This list isn’t all-inclusive, but it’ll be a great start for lots of projects!
- kid-safe scissors
- glue sticks or school glue
- construction paper
- googly eyes
- toilet paper tubes
- paint and paintbrushes
- felt
- tissue paper
Santa Claus Crafts for Kids
When you have kids waiting for a visit from Santa, giving them crafts to do in preparation is a great way to occupy their time. Christmas crafts are great for teaching kids about the holidays while working on their energy and creativity skills.
Start your holiday celebrations for Santa’s visit with these easy kid’s Santa crafts.
1. Cricut Candy Cane Elf
If you have a cutting machine like a Cricut or Silhouette, you can quickly assemble these cute candy cane elves. You only need candy canes, cardstock, pom poms, glue dots, and double-sided adhesive. Once you cut out the template with your machine, your kids can assemble it.
2. Star Santa Christmas Ornament
This simple star Santa can be cute decor for your Christmas tree and a fun craft for your children. You’ll need popsicle sticks, paper scraps, a red marker or paint, pom poms or cotton balls, twine, and different glues—PVA, stick, and glue.
By Red Ted Art
3. Dollar Tree Craft Santa
This dollar store project turns simple wooden craft sticks into a bashful Santa craft on a budget. Everything you need to make the big guy in a red suit can come from Dollar Tree. It requires craft sticks, paint, pom poms, googly eyes, iridescent glitter glue, sponge dabbers, and craft foam.
4. Christmas Construction Paper Binoculars
These Christmas binoculars make watching the sky for the big guy on the year’s biggest night fun. They’re easy for kids to make, they don’t need a lot of materials, and they upcycle leftover trash, like empty toilet paper rolls. You’ll also need construction paper, yarn, and a hole punch.
Related Christmas crafts:
- 20 Printable Christmas Crafts Kids Can Make
- 21 Cute Christmas Handprint Crafts for Kids
- 27 Easy Reindeer Crafts for Kids
- 17 Elf on the Shelf Ideas for a Magical Holiday Season
5. Paper Plate Santa Craft
This simple paper plate craft turns an ordinary kitchen essential into a festive Santa with minimal work or supplies. Print the template (from the link below) with a home printer, then get some cardstock, a paper plate, cotton balls, and paint. You or your kids can cut out the template and assemble them on the plate.
6. Nutter Butter Christmas Cookie Sandwiches
This edible kids’ Christmas craft, like Santa, Rudolph, and Snowmen, turns basic ingredients into Christmas decor. You’ll need semi-sweet and white chocolate chips, mini pretzels, red hots, sugar sprinkles, candy eyes, coconut flakes, and black food gel. For assembly, you’ll use toothpicks and wax paper.
By Fluxing Well
7. Paper Santa Bookmark
This Santa bookmark could be the perfect usable craft if kids love to read. It’s all paper, so you don’t need to visit the craft store or dig out your craft kits. You’ll need red and white paper and scraps of yellow and pink (or you can color white paper). Plus, get a pen and a glue stick.
By Red Ted Art
8. Simple Paper Santa Craft
If you want the simplest craft possible for your kids to do without your help, you’ll love this basic paper Santa. It’s as simple as printing the template for your kids to color, cut out, and glue. Cardstock is better for printing than regular paper due to its thickness.
Make sure to try these fun printable Christmas crafts as well!
9. Cotton Ball Bearded Santa
This simple printable Santa with a cotton ball beard is perfect for young crafters to practice their basic craft functions of coloring, cutting, and gluing. And who doesn’t love projects with minimal supply needs? This simple craft requires a printed template, coloring, glue, and cotton balls.
10. Santa’s Grotto 3D Craft
This neat project turns a piece of paper into an amazing 3D Santa’s workshop. The printed worksheet helps your kids learn how to follow directions and practice cutting, gluing, and coloring. Even better, once assembled, they’ll enjoy the magic of seeing Santa and his minions hard at work inside the grotto.
11. Paper Roll Santa Ornament
This adorable Santa ornament craft turns a basic empty toilet paper roll into a cute, jolly red guy to adorn your tree. You only need a little material besides the roll. Grab a piece of string, construction paper, cotton, a red pom pom, googly eyes, glue, scissors, and a marker.
12. Cute Christmas Gnome
This Christmas gnome project uses a red fuzzy sock, a piece of white fuzz, a red ribbon, a white pom pom, white craft paint, a large wood bead, and some pine needles. You’ll also need two large cups, a paper plate, and a wood skewer to assemble the pine needle paint stand.
13. Santa Mason Jar Lid Ornament
This project turns a mason jar lid ring into a creative Santa Claus. You’ll also need several colors of felt, small googly eyes, holiday twine, puffy paint, yarn needles, cotton balls, a hot glue gun, and a pencil. Kids will have fun pulling the cotton balls apart while you glue the pieces together.
14. Father Christmas Festive Paper Bookmark
This bookmark makes Father Time the perfect placeholder for your kid’s favorite holiday stories. You’ll need some colored cardstock, a glue stick, the template, and a black pen. Kids will love having Santa offer a helping hand with their Christmas book placement.
15. Upcycled Toilet Paper Roll Santa
This textured Santa project requires a leftover toilet paper roll, some texted paper (in red), colored papers, cotton balls, felt, and googly eyes. With a few snips and stretches, some glue, and some wrapping, your kids will have this easy Santa craft ready for festive fun.
Related craft: Fun Toilet Paper Roll Bird Feeder Craft for Kids
16. Cheerful Santa Cup Craft
Kids will love taking a few minutes to make these cheerful Santas out of paper cups and colored cardstock. Seriously, how great are projects that only need cutting and gluing? It’s a great craft to occupy your kids while you get some stuff done nearby.
17. Peek-a-Boo Santa Project
This paper plate craft makes fun of hiding Santa using a paper plate, a popsicle stick, and colored cardstock. You’ll also need paint, a pencil, tape, glue, and the Santa template.
18. Construction Paper Christmas Characters
This project lets you use construction paper and glue to make four fun Christmas characters. Following the instructions, your children can do a snowman, an elf, Rudolph, and Santa. It’s the perfect craft for young crafters with minimal skills or crafts.
19. Felt Santa and Bow Ornaments
You can make Santa and angel bow ornaments from craft felt, glue, ribbons, posterboard, seed beads, pom poms, buttons, chenille stems, and templates. Adults may need to assist younger kids with the hot glue to create tree ornaments you can value every season.
20. Santa Construction Paper Christmas Countdown
If your kids love to count down until the day the big red guy comes to town, they’ll love this construction paper countdown calendar. Not only is this Santa too cute, but kids will have a great time tearing the rings off his beard daily until Christmas. You’ll need a paper plate, colored paper, googly eyes, and cotton balls.
21. Pleasing Paper Plate Santa Project
Paper plate crafts make the perfect budget project when you’re short on time and money. It would help if you had a paper plate, washable paint, and the template of this cute, overexaggerated Santa template that kids of any age can piece together without help from parents.
By Little Ladoo
22. Santa Popsicle Stick Project
If you have some popsicle sticks in your craft room, you have the perfect base for a wooden Santa. You also need cotton, a small red pom pom, googly eyes, and construction paper. A string or ribbon on the back can make the perfect tree decor.
By Little Ladoo
23. Fork Painting Santa Project
This project comes ready to decorate straight from your printer; no coloring is needed. You only need to provide your children with a fork (plastic if you don’t want to use your good ones) and some white paint. You can cut out the Santa image or leave it on cardstock to hang as a picture.
By Little Ladoo
24. Santa and Present Puppet
If you have kids who love storytelling and acting out scenes, they may enjoy creating these cute Santa puppets. You’ll need craft sticks, craft paper, embossed paper, a black Sharpie, and the printed template.
You may need to help younger kids cut out the pieces, while older kids can do everything unattended. It’s a great project for following directions and learning shapes.
25. Santa’s Letter with Envelope
Printables are perfect projects for kids, as they require nothing more than a piece of paper and your home printer. Kids love to send their wish letters to Santa, and this printable template makes it easy for them to report their behaviors and Christmas wishes with little assistance.
26. Paper Plate Sleigh and Santa
Of all the paper plate Santa crafts out there, this one is our favorite, as it uses Christmas magic to create a moving sleigh. You’ll need several paper plates, popsicle sticks, paint, and glue. After assembling, your kids will have a cool puppet Santa and sleigh to use for their festive celebrations.
27. Fillable Santa Claus Ball Ornament
Nothing beats DIY Christmas ornaments to add to the tree. This project uses clear plastic ornaments as your base. You can fill these plastic pieces with small pom poms or red candies and decorate them with black ribbon and gold glitter washi tape.
28. Accordion Limbs Santa Claus Craft
To make this printable Santa craft, you’ll need several colors of cardstock or construction paper, a black marker, and some glue. Print the template in the right cardstock colors, create four strips for the arms and legs, and fold them in accordion style. Then, assemble the pieces for a cool Santa project.
29. Santa Suit Popsicle Stick Bucket List
Your kids can create a creative Christmas bucket list with a simple Dollar Tree pail. This project is great for families with different holiday plans and preferences. Each family member can write their Christmas wish on a popsicle stick and add it to the Santa suit bucket to be pulled every day. It’s a great way to have plenty of celebratory ideas to lead up to Christmas day.
30. Printable Santa Countdown Calendar
For this countdown calendar, you need the printed calendar template, cotton balls or pom poms, and glue. However, you can also use markers or crayons to color the calendar. This number activity is great for getting your kids excited and patient about their favorite day.
31. Festive Paper Cup Santa
This festive Santa turns a basic paper cup into a cute Santa. You’ll need googly eyes, glue, felt, foam, cotton balls, a paper cup, and some white paper. Adults may need to assist younger children who don’t have strong control of their fine motor skills.
Celebrate Christmas with 31 Kids Santa Crafts
These delightful Santa crafts for kids requiring minimal supplies and supervision. These projects feature simple instructions and utilize common household craft items. Keep your little ones engaged and entertained while celebrating the festive season with these creative Santa Claus crafts.
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