Home Daycare Crafts and Activities for Holidays
This page may contain affiliate links. Learn More.
Celebrating holidays in daycare can be a lot of fun for the kids and providers. These home daycare crafts and activities can help make your celebrations fun! Coming up with things for kids to do is the main part of running a home daycare, and planning ahead will make that easier for you!
There are so many good ideas for holiday parties and celebrations in home daycare that don’t have to be difficult or expensive. I keep a bowling set and a plastic ring toss game and alternate those for every other party.
It adds some motor skill practice as well as colorful fun. I also have a bean bag toss that we use on occasion with some bowl-shaped targets.
Home daycare activities
Keeping your home daycare crafts and activities fun doesn’t have to kill you. Just find ways to make things simple. You can use paper plates. For valentines, draw hearts on them, for Halloween draw pumpkins, etc. Line them out on the floor and let kids jump from plate to plate.
For a great printable to use with your stone soup friendship soup, check this out.
This could also work for other lesson plans like drawing lily pads and playing frog jump. Cheap, easy, and FUN! These are the kind of ideas I like. Ones I can make with supplies I already have in a few minutes. Check out these 5 minute prep activities too!
Infant activities for daycare
Here are a bunch of ways to decorate a pumpkin that don’t involve any cutting. Infants could enjoy many of these as part of your Halloween celebration. And what infant wouldn’t love to play with this Halloween puppet? And don’t forget this printable pumpkin lapbook activity! And this Handprint Pumpkin Craft Activity for Preschoolers is fun too! Or a Handprint Bat Craft Activity for Preschoolers is fun as well!
Check out these really fun paper dolls you can dress in Halloween costumes. Also, if you have a loved one with autism, you can print out these teal pumpkin Halloween signs.
Another fun Halloween idea is shrinky dinks! You can make keychains or jewelry with these fun and free printable Halloween shrinky dink patterns. And check out these fun Halloween snacks that are easy too. So easy, in fact, the kids could make them as an activity!
Here’s a cute little shamrock you can do with your littles for St Patrick’s day.
Music and movement is the BEST activity for a holiday celebration. We have a holiday channel on our tv stations that has music for every holiday at the time they’re going on. So we use that for dancing beats!
You could make these Valentine hugs for your infants or any age of kids to take home or even help them mail them to their grandparents. Or these Paper Plate Heart Wreath crafts. These toilet paper roll heart bouquets are super fun too!
These cute little egg shakers would be fun to make for your infants to play with during the Easter party! And you can let them fingerprint and then make these easy flower crafts for them. Your older kids could do more of the process too.
Toddler activities for daycare
One of our favorite activities for all ages is pumpkin daycare crafts and activities. I like science, so there’s always science in my themes for sure!
These Valentine crafts and activities for your holiday celebration are going to simplify your Valentine party plans! Another great way to celebrate Valentine’s day is with friendship activities like these. Your kids will love these fun Valentine’s butterflies they can make.
For toddlers and preschoolers to make for Valentine’s Day, these potato print hearts can decorate bags, cards, and even toilet paper. These Valentine’s Coloring pages will be lots of fun at your next daycare holiday celebration. Kids love coloring and these are right at your fingertips.
And these Valentine sticker hearts are great for toddlers as well! Any age child would love to do them! And don’t forget to decorate Valentine boxes with your toddlers or any of your kids so they’ll have a “mailbox to put their cards in”.
Check out this Valentine craft with paper heart shapes, and craft sticks. Makes a cute butterfly puppet! You can make these adorable heart fingerprint poem pdfs for kids to make gifts for their loved ones. These fingerprint poems are easy valentine’s day crafts for kids or the perfect Mother’s day keepsake! And here is a Valentine Bingo game you can print out and play.
A cute and fun heart shape and color matching activity for Valentines Day. Young Toddlers can practice fitting heart shapes into a heart slot while older toddlers can practice color matching. Preschoolers can practice matching the letters on the hearts to the letters on the slot.
A great daycare craft for Christmas is decorating clear glass ornaments. Even really young toddlers can do these and they are great for fine motor skill-building. You can use things you already have on hand. (My favorite) You can make these cute snowflake ornaments. And these star ornaments are fun too! If you have a few pom poms, you can use them to make these Christmas tree ornaments as well. This cute cardboard Christmas tree pasta craft is so simple and easy for kids to make, and a great way to upcycle the shipping boxes piled in your garage from all of those Christmas gifts, too!
Here’s a super fun printable downloadable coloring gingerbread house craft to go with your Christmas fun!
I LOVE making these handprint Christmas trees for home daycare crafts at the daycare. It’s so cute and it has part of everyone. And kids of any age can make these sleigh prints for process art at the party. Countdown to Christmas with a cute paper Snowman Chain! You can also do the 12 days of Christmas activities with kids! Or these fun elf on the shelf ideas!
Painting is a fun home daycare craft for any holiday party. Check out these easy fun ways to do it. Easily create these watercolor paintings for any holiday using painter’s tape and watercolors. All ages will enjoy seeing paint colors mix. Some adult assistance is needed to help with the taping with younger kids.
St. Patrick’s Day coloring is a fun activity for kids of all ages. Here are some leprechaun coloring pages and some St. Patrick’s Day gnome coloring pages for kids of all ages.
Use items from the backyard to make a fun and unique fireworks painting is a perfect home daycare craft for the 4th of July or New Year’s Eve. And these fireworks in a jar are awesome too. Or some 4th of July Shrinky Dinks!
I love this fun carrot craft for easter too! Or this pasta egg craft, so easy and so cute!
Preschool activities for daycare
This preschool pumpkin theme is lots of fun. I use these activities with my games to make a simple and inexpensive party.
These adorable egg carton Halloween crafts are so fun and easy to make! With just one egg carton, we will show you how to make four Jack o lanterns, two ghosts, and four spiders with this great eco-friendly craft. Or make this fun skeleton out of q-tips! And who doesn’t love making paper chains? These printable pumpkin ones would be great for your party!
And what about these fun Monster hand puppets? So cute and so easy.
One of our favorite holiday activities at Little Sprouts is our gingerbread celebration. Everything you need to know is here. A great Christmas craft is these star ornaments made out of sticks from the backyard. And don’t forget about candy cane activities for daycare.
Upcycling some cardboard tubes into these adorable reindeer is a fun and easy craft for your Christmas party. Or make these paper plate reindeer if you have plates on hand.
A scavenger hunt or obstacle course is a great activity to add to your holiday party. You can theme them for the holiday or just make them as part of the party anyway.
For the 4th of July we usually do a sprinkler party in the backyard. Lots of fun can be had with some water!
And don’t forget Mother’s day and Father’s day which we celebrate by just making gifts for mom or dad. The kids could make flowers for mom or easter, or whatever with these paper flowers. So cute with their little hand holding them. Check out this adorable Butterfly Kisses for Mom card template.
Your toddlers and preschoolers can even make a Father’s Day gift with fingerpainting like this one.
Check out this Mother’s day printable questionnaire you can use too! Download and print it for free today!
Check out this fun idea for making homemade cookies with kids for St. Patrick’s day! They could be made for any holiday, but it’s so much fun for kids to get to cook their own snacks and party foods! Another great idea for St. Pat’s is this stained glass clover craft. So much fun!
And this shamrock hat is fun for kids of all ages too!
Here’s a fun free printable Valentine’s day party game. Alphabet bingo! Another Valentine activity that you probably have everything for. This fun beaded heart. Valentine’s Day is almost here, and love is in the air!
Let your child create their own Valentine cards this year with this set of 4 free Valentine printable crafts.
If your kid is a stick collector, you can turn them into fun friendship wands for Valentine’s Day! Plus, you can use this printable template in English, Chinese, or Korean to share an uplifting word with a friend!
Groundhog day is a fun day to celebrate, and here is a groundhog headband craft you can print out and do.
Don’t forget about Dr. Seuss day too! This thing 1 and thing 2 pencil craft is oodles of fun too!
We also love making Cat in the Hat Hat Crafts at Little Sprouts.
This hatching chick craft is fun for Easter as well. Or you could make this adorable paper plate rabbit home daycare craft with your kids.
Grab that candy corn and trace the kid’s hands to make this fun Handprint Candy Corn Turkey project for Thanksgiving! Check out this free printable turkey in disguise activity for kids for Thanksgiving too! Looking for a fun and cute turkey craft? All you need are recycled toilet paper rolls plus a few other things you have at home! It’s even multilingual! And don’t forget these fun Thanksgiving lacing cards for a cool fine motor activity! And a fan favorite, this How to Make a Cute Turkey Handprint Craft with Kids.
School age activities for daycare
A favorite activity for school-age children or even preschooler home daycare crafts is making homemade shrinky dinks. There are Valentine patterns and Christmas patterns in these articles.
The Olympics aren’t a holiday, but they are one of my favorite things to celebrate with the kids! Check out these Olympic celebration ideas for daycare.
And I have some fun party drinks for kids too! They always add a special touch to the celebration (and you can do them without artificial colors or sweeteners!)
You can make this fun Christmas slime with your school-age kids for their party. I think preschoolers could even make it too.
Here’s a free printable Valentine math color by number for your school-agers to do!
And they’ll love this paper plate leprechaun craft for St. Patty’s too!
Make a paper lantern for New Years in just 5 steps!
These home daycare crafts and activities are simple, fun, and inexpensive but will make your holiday celebrations fun! I can’t wait to hear all about it!
And if you’re looking for more low maintenance ideas, check these mess free activities out.
Here are some fun printables you can get to make these special days:
