Christmas Card Holder Craft

What You Need:

• Plain or patterned paper grocery or shopping bag
• Safety scissors
• Christmas stocking, to be traced, or it can be drawn freehand
• Markers, stickers, glitter glue, cotton balls, any other embellishments
• Hole punch optional
• Glue

What You Do:

1. First, help your child trace the stocking onto the paper bag. If your child traces it in the middle of the paper bag, then she will be able to retain the handles and use them to carry her cardholder.
2. Ask her to carefully cut out the stocking shape. To prevent the two sides of the bag from slipping while she cuts, tape the sides together in a few places. It seems simple, but cutting through the thickness of paper bags can be quite a task, so your child’s hand muscles will get a good workout while she works on her hand-eye coordination, too.
3. Next, have your child glue the two sides and bottom edge together.
4. While it dries, your child can decorate the stocking.
5. You might suggest that your child use the cardholder as a fun advent calendar to count down the days to Christmas. For example, your child can punch 25 circles and glue them all around the stocking. Then, each day of the month beginning on December 1st, she can write or glue numbers onto each of the punched circles in any arrangement that she wants.
6. Each day, your child can go to the mailbox to find holiday cards. After your family opens the cards and reads them together, your child can slip them into the card keeper. Come Christmas Day, the stocking will be full of cheery wishes sent from all around the country, and perhaps the world! Alternatively, your family can display the cards as you normally would throughout the month, and use the stocking to store the ones that you want to keep.