Whether you are looking for a slow day to keep frazzled children calm or the weather is too bad to want to venture outside, it can be difficult to keep coming up with different activities to keep kids occupied over the Christmas holidays that don’t involve endless screen time. So we’ve put together a few simple options you can use if you need to.

Festive no bake recipe

A fun and yummy no bake recipe which involves a lot of hands-on decorating with icing and sweets is making Christmas tree cones.

For this festive confection you will need:

• Ice cream cones with flat bottoms so they can stand up nicely when they are upside down.
• Green icing – which can be from pre-made tub to make life easier.
• Small sweets and sprinkles such as Skittles, Smarties, little star sprinkles for the top or even a chocolate Magic Star.

Instructions:

1. Begin by placing the upside-down ice cream cones onto a sheet of parchment paper or a plate.
2. Next spread the green icing over the entire surface of the cone. Although this step is messy it can be a very tactile experience for children as they spread the gooey icing over the cones.
3. Various sweets can be pressed into the sticky icing as baubles and either star sprinkles or a chocolate star can be placed on top.
4. As these don’t need any baking or chilling you are able to distribute them as a snack as soon as you are done – which is always a bonus when your children don’t want to wait to eat their creations!

Making your own Christmas decorations

Making a Christmas decoration can be a nice way to spend some time together, either just enjoying the time with each other or making memories that can be laminated and hung on the tree or taped to walls for years to come.

If you don’t mind getting messy then you can get out all the craft supplies and things to draw and paint with, so you can have your own collection of Christmas Trees or stars to turn into bunting, create Rudolph pictures from your child’s handprint which can be cut out, laminated and added to a tree or joined together to form wreaths.

If you want something a little more personal, salt dough fingerprint or handprint ornaments for your tree are easy to make and can look amazing.

For this you will need:

• 250g plain flour
• 125ml water
• 125g table salt

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 50C or its lowest setting and line a baking sheet with baking parchment.
2. Mix the flour and salt in a large bowl. Add the water slowly and stir it until it all comes together in a smooth ball. Finish bringing it all together with your hands and knead the dough for around 5 minutes or so.
3. Place the dough to a floured work surface and create your chosen shape. You can use biscuit cutters, spoons, or anything else you can think of to create your desired shape. Then, add your child’s fingerprints as part of the decoration. Be sure to leave a small hole for ribbon to thread through when it’s finished if you intend to hang it on the tree.
4. When you are happy with your shape and design, put your finished items on the lined baking sheet and bake for 3 hrs or until solid.
5. Leave to cool and then paint and decorate however you want.

Squishy sensory bags with a festive spin

There are all sorts of themes for squishy sensory bags that you can create with your child so not only do you have the fun of making them, but they also get to play with them afterwards.

For this you will need:

Heavy duty freezer bags

Strong duct tape/ packing tape or a method to safely seal the bags

Choose your ‘squish’ to add movement – this could be hair gel / hand sanitiser/ hair conditioner/ shaving foam

Add-ins such as glitter, foil stars, small beads, small plastic snowflakes.

Marker pens if you want to create a design on the outside of the bag.

Instructions:

There are no hard and fast rules here, so try out different things, but for a winter theme you could add clear hair gel, blue, silver and white glitter, plastic snowflakes and mini white marshmallows to your bag. Or opt for white shaving cream, colourful snowflakes and glitter. Make sure to firmly seal the bag before allowing your child to play with it.

For something Christmas themed, draw a Christmas tree on the outside of the bag then add in clear hair gel or hand sanitizer, along with small beads in different shapes and colours along with strands of tinsel and a star or angel shape to the bag. Once it has been firmly sealed the beads and tinsel can be moved into place to decorate the tree design in different ways.