Christmas and crafts are almost synonymous. I love making Christmas crafts with my kids at home and my school babies. But the Christmas crafts serve a purpose--gifts for parents or gifts for teachers or church volunteers! Read to find out 3 easy Christmas gifts I make with kids every year!

No Bake Gingerbread Ornaments

A teacher friend of mine introduced me to no bake gingerbread ornaments years ago and I've made them every year since.

In the classroom, we start these a week or two before Christmas break. They take a few days to dry and make the room smell so super yummy! We make the dough together and then I call back kids one at a time to cut out their gingerbread man. Then, I write their name on the wax paper next to their ornament and we leave them out to dry and fill our room with Christmas smells!

We also make these with our kids at home the day after Thanksgiving. And they make our kitchen smell just as yummy. We've made these at home for 10 years and every year I keep one gingerbread ornament for our kitchen tree. Even the very first gingerbread ornament we made still smells delicious a decade later!

You can read all the detailed steps and get the recipe for these in this no bake gingerbread ornaments blog post.

Rudolph Ornaments

Can I be honest with you? Handprint ornaments are cute, but I'm a sucker for a craft made with wooden sticks. That's why I love these Rudolph ornaments so much!

This one is a piece of cake for my first graders...almost. The pipe cleaner antlers take some help for some kids with not as strong fine motor kids. But I always have a handful of kids that are really good at twisting the antlers and walk around and help the others!

I also get premade red ribbons for the girls if they want them! :) You can find the detailed step by step directions on this ornament in this wooden reindeer ornament blog post.

Christmas Potpourri Jars

We have about a bazillion and one people to give Christmas gifts to in our family. Okay, I'm kidding. Kinda.

But by the time we add up school teachers, OT/PT/ST therapists, church teachers for all the kids... it adds up! And I don't know about you, but this momma can't afford a $20 gift basket for each one.

That's why we make Christmas potpourri jars every year for my own kids' teachers and volunteers.

My mom has made this basic Christmas potpourri recipe since I was little. I don't remember a Christmas without smelling stove top potpourri. I put some on the stove starting the day after Thanksgiving when we decorate for Christmas, and every year, without fault, that smell takes me back to my childhood Christmases. Isn't it amazing how smells do that?

When I was looking for a cheap, but thoughtful Christmas gift to give out in mass, I knew I needed to find a way to bottle up my Momma's Christmas potpourri.

I used her same basic recipe and added a few green twigs of pine or rosemary to make it prettier and every single year these gifts are a hit! And with all the homemade Christmas candies that get exchanged each year, I love being able to give a smell!

Get the recipe and ideas for how I've packaged it over the years in this Christmas Potpourri blog post.

Painted Presents

Last, but definitely not least are painted presents. We started this family tradition when my oldest was 3 years old and have continued it since then. I'm not big into buying Christmas cards for everyone, so this is our way of making "cards" for our family at Christmas.

I wrap all of our Christmas gifts in brown kraft paper and write names on the gifts in sharpie. Then, once I have the gifts ready, we spend a family night painting.

We brainstorm Christmas pictures that we could paint to help the younger kids. Then, we grab a box and get to painting. We all paint--even Mom and Dad! Every year I'm floored with how perfect they turn out.

For my 4 year olds, we are still doing handprint art on their boxes, but they will hopefully be able to paint on their own in the next year or two.

The grandparents LOVE this so much and keep all of their artwork from each year. My kids talk about this every year now, and I hope it's a unique Christmas gift tradition that they always remember! You can see more closeups of presents we did a few years ago in this brown paper painted packages post.