Holiday Crafts & Games for the Whole Family

This holiday season is the perfect time to find a new craft or game that the whole family can join in on. Regardless of how old anyone in your family is, making these crafts and playing these games will be sure to bring some holiday joy into your home.

Holiday Craft Ideas

Holiday Corking (French Knitting)

Get your creative juices flowing with this traditional, easy, fun and tactile way to knit. This style of knitting is called corking, which was a traditional pastime in the 1800’s. It introduced young children to the useful skill of knitting.

The corking method of knitting doesn’t use knitting needles. Instead, it uses a loom. Don’t worry though, you can easily make a corking loom using materials you’ll find at home. You’ll need:

• 4 pencils
• A toilet paper roll
• Tape
• Holiday themed yarn

You can use this method to make holiday-themed shapes, hair bands, key chain ornaments and more!

For the full tutorial, you can head to the Black Creek Pioneer Village website.

Snowman Marshmallow Ornament

This is such a cute and simple craft idea. The end result will be an adorable winter-themed ornament that looks like the face of a snowman. You can hang this craft on a Christmas tree, in the window or on a holiday wreath.

To make this adorable craft, you’ll need the following supplies:

• A plastic, fillable ornament
• Mini marshmallows (or cotton balls or the tips of cotton swabs)
• Black 3D or puffy paint
• Orange 3D or puffy paint
• Festive holiday ribbon

You can head to The Chirping Moms blog for the full tutorial.

Festive Woven Bookmark

This is the perfect craft idea to make as a gift for the avid readers in your family. This craft is inspired by the Black Creek Pioneer Village Weaver’s Shop. A traditional weaver uses a loom to weave yarn together. To make this woven bookmark, you can make your own tiny loom at home using a piece of cardboard.

For this craft, you will need:

• A small piece of cardboard
• 3 metres or more of festive coloured yarn or string
• A paper clip
• A hair comb
• Scissors
• Optional: a ruler and pencil

You can head to the Black Creek Pioneer Village website for the complete tutorial on how to put together this craft.

Chunky & Trendy Yarn Wreath

This is a beautiful holiday craft the whole family can work on together. When you’re finished, you’ll have a gorgeous, trendy holiday wreath that can hang on a door, the wall or even up in a window.

This craft is a little more advanced than others on this list, so a few more specific items will be necessary. For this craft, you will need:

• A 12” embroidery hoop
• Chunky luxe big yarn
• Leather strap
• Decorative nail head
• Small piece of string

For the full step-by-step tutorial, head to the Joyful Derivatives blog.

Holiday Games

Reindeer Ring Toss

This game is sure to make for a fun time with the family. You will need to purchase or make a set of antlers and some rings, but it is worth it.

In this game, you can either make two teams or work together as a group. One person wears the antlers and the other family member(s) try to successfully toss the rings so they land on the antlers. For the more competitive families, you can make each antler count for a different score, to add up your total for each round and find a winner.

If you’d like to buy your own game, you can find it on the Canadian Tire website.

Snowman Bowling

This is a fun craft and game, all wrapped into one! You can take a few empty tissue boxes or other similarly-sized boxes for this craft.

Start by painting the boxes white and decorating them, so when they’re stacked together they look like a snowman. You can really commit to making it look like a snowman, or go a little more basic with this one. It’s totally up to you!

After crafting your stacked snowman boxes, take a plastic toy ball like a mini basketball or soccer ball and take turns bowling. Feel free to make several snowmen for a fun family game night!

For the complete and polished tutorial of this craft, head to the Craftaholics Anonymous blog.

Oven Mitts Gift Opening

You can play this game with actual gifts, or you can make fake gifts for this game. You choose. Either way, the goal of this game is to challenge one another to be the first or the fastest to successfully open a present with–you guessed it–oven mitts!

Feel free to find some festive oven mitts of your own for this game, or use the ones from the kitchen. Fabric oven mitts are best, as opposed to silicone ones.

For the complete game materials and instructions, you can head to the RKO Ideas Galore blog.

Holiday Freeze Dance

This one is a classic and easy holiday game to play at home with the whole family. For holiday freeze dance, you’ll just need a wide open room that the whole family can fit in.

To play, start by playing some holiday themed music. Assign one family member to be the music “pauser”. Then, cue the family to dance. Continue dancing and moving around the room. At random, the person in charge of the music will pause the music, which means everyone needs to freeze and stay still in place. The last person to freeze is out.

Continue playing round after round until you’re down to two players. The last person remaining wins! You can think of a fun holiday treat for the winner, like being king for the day or having a special roll at home that day.

If you’re looking for ideas for music, you can start with this Happy Holidays playlist on Spotify.

Bri Mitchell

Bri is a Toronto native who has spent many years living abroad, but has been happily reconnected with Ontario for the past three years. She loves writing about travel experiences in our beautiful province including all things nature, food and culture. You can find her canoeing and swimming across Ontario with a craft brew in her hand in the summer, and snowshoeing or curling up with a good book and an Ontarian Pinot Noir in the winter. Follow along on Instagram @mstravelingmitch.