Arts and Crafts for this Holiday Season

Arts and crafts can add fun to any holiday celebration. The holiday season is fast approaching and every year, I look for special arts and crafts projects for my students to complete. There are many great winters and seasonal activities that kids of all ages can do by themselves or with adult supervision. In my classroom, we do many different projects over the course of the year, but I like to make the seasonal/holiday crafts special. Often times an ornament or holiday project will be kept as a family memento.

Since the students get their fall pictures taken at the start of the year, I try to include them in an at least one-holiday art project. Some years I have had students include their school pictures on the front of their Thanksgiving books, or I will use on a snowflake Christmas ornament.
While it can be challenging to include these activities during the instructional day, I believe that kids need the opportunity to color, cut, and paste. So, I might add several projects to the language arts centers, or give the kids a chance to work on arts and crafts activities when they have completed their work. When you decide what projects you want to do, you can determine when would be the most appropriate time to work on them.
Another opportunity to include seasonal arts and crafts projects is during classroom parties. We typically have a Halloween party, a Thanksgiving feast, Christmas party, and Valentine's party. We usually include an art project for a party activity. We might make a hand-print bat for Halloween, a pine cone turkey for Thanksgiving, and a snowflake ornament for Christmas.
Do you have seasonal or holiday arts and crafts projects that you enjoy doing with your students? As always, we would love to hear your comments.