Creative Christmas games for kids
Christmas is the perfect time to combine your two favourite things: crafting and family fun. With all the magic in the air there's plenty of inspiration around for mini artists, so check out our top five ideas for crafty Christmas games and get the party started!
1. Festive Pictionary
Divide into teams and get your hands on a flipchart or blackboard for drawing on, and some festive cue cards. Take it in turns to draw the word or phrase on your card - your teammates will have 1 minute to guess what you're drawing (one point for each correct answer!), so make sure someone on the opposite team is timing you.
Need some Christmas words for your game? Get your teeth into these: reindeer, sleigh, Santa, presents, candy cane, mince pies, mistletoe, Christmas tree, snowballs, stocking, mittens, gingerbread house, roast dinner, the Grinch.
Reward the winning team with some tasty festive treats, or first choice of the Christmas crackers.
2. Build a snowman
It's been the question on everybody's lips all year: do you want to build a snowman? Now you can, with this creative (and tasty) game.
Take it in turns to roll a dice and collect parts of an edible snowman. The first one to complete their snowman wins, and gets to tuck in first! You will need to do some advance preparation: use writing icing to draw faces and buttons on your marshmallows, to make heads and bodies.
Here are the numbers you need to roll for each part of the snowman:
1 = kebab skewer on which to build your snowman
2 = marshmallow head
3 = marshamallow body
4 = mini marshmallow hat
5 = orange sweet for a nose
6 = red lace sweet for a scarf
3. Paper snowflake challenge
Cut your paper into a square, then fold it in half diagonally to make a triangle. Fold this triangle in half, into a smaller triangle, then fold this smaller triangle into thirds to make an arrow shape with one point at the top, and two points sticking out at the bottom.
Snip off the bottom of the arrow, so you are left with a long, narrow triangle with a flat base. Now you can get creative! Start cutting into your folded triangle, snipping curved and angular shapes out of the sides. When you unfold your paper, you should have a beautiful snowflake!
You can turn this craft into a challenge for the whole family: see who can make the most elaborate snowflake and reward them with some Christmas cake!
4. Christmas cookie tray game
Next, get a tray and a tea towel. Arrange your cookies on the tray and let the kids look at it for 10 seconds, then cover the tray with the tea towel and carefully remove one cookie without the children seeing. Take away the tea towel and see who can guess which cookie has disappeared.
You can keep playing for as long as you like, and even move the cookies around on the tray to make things trickier. Don't forget to give everyone their favourite cookie as a prize!
5. Gift exchange
Each player brings one gift, already wrapped up. You can wrap up your gifts as elaborately as you like - put them in boxes to make them look bigger, or stuff them with newspaper to give them peculiar shapes.
Sit in a circle with the gifts in the middle. The first person chooses a gift from the pile and then the next person can choose to either 'steal' that gift or choose another from the pile.
Decide beforehand how many times you will go around the circle, but do carry on at least until all the gifts have been taken from the middle. When you decide to end the game, everybody can open their presents to see what they've ended up with!
We hope you have a wonderful, creative and crafty Christmas!
Image source 1: pritsadee
Image source 2: sarsmis
Image source 3: g_peshkova
Image source 4: egal
Image source 5: Acik