Are you beginning your list of family-friendly Christmas decorations and celebrations? As you plan your holiday, it’s important to keep Christmas decorating safety tips in mind. There are plenty of DIY and child-appropriate holiday crafts and projects that will spruce up your home, all while being safe for everyone.
Keep Materials in Mind
When planning a Christmas decorating scheme, consider what your decorations themselves are made from. If you have pets, babies or other very young children, you should avoid sharp decorations or those that could get very hot, like old-fashioned light bulbs for your tree.
In addition, keep breakable ornaments and trinkets to a minimum. The holidays are filled with glitz and sparkle, but items that catch the eye of little ones can be like a magnet to little hands. If these decorations are dropped, they can break and pose a threat to children.
If you’ll be making decorations together, be sure to keep tools like scissors, hot glue guns, and needles (like for stringing popcorn for your trees) away from kids. Speaking of those popcorn strands, don’t leave children unattended around popcorn, cranberries or other choking hazards while you make your decorations. The same goes for any treats or hard candies you are using to make gingerbread houses or cookies.
Be Aware of Household Hazards
When decorating with your family, you’ll want to clean up toys, books and extraneous clutter to make room for the addition of trees, ornaments and holiday villages. Be sure that all doors and windows are accessible; don’t ever block them with decor.
Keep outlet covers in place to protect small children, and hide extension cords behind furniture so they are not a tripping hazard or treated like a toy. Don’t leave your Christmas tree or other powered decorations plugged in for extended periods of time, as doing so can be a fire risk.
If you are decorating a Christmas tree, keep breakable ornaments up high. If you really want to make things safe for small children, you can avoid the use of ornaments altogether to remove the risk of breakage and injuries from hooks.
Instead, tie sparkly ribbons and bows on your tree, use garland or stick to a string of lights. Also, consider tying the tree to a nearby piece of furniture, the wall or the ceiling to prevent tipping.
Safe Projects for Kids
Looking for some great DIY ideas for family-friendly Christmas decorations? Look no further than your kids’ craft supplies. If you usually draw with markers or cut shapes from construction paper, invoke the use of these items for the holidays, too. Create paper chains in the shape of Christmas trees and hang them over doorways; cut out holiday shapes and tape them to walls or windows.
You can also make lovely window clings using fabric paint on waxed paper. Use cookie cutters in holiday shapes to create the outline, then fill it with fabric paint in seasonal colors. Allow the paint to dry. The entire shape will then peel off the waxed paper and you can stick it to your window.
Mantle-top Christmas trees can be made of pom poms or cotton balls glued around a cone (or even a piece of thin cardboard rolled into a cone shape, with its bottom trimmed to be flat). You can also make a garland out of decorative twine or ribbon and hang pom poms or Christmas shapes from it.
Make a festive snow globe to use as a table centerpiece or shelf decoration. All you’ll need is a clean, dry food jar with its label removed and small trees, houses, figures or pinecones to go inside. Fill the jar with epoxy and glycerin, and use glitter to create a wintry effect. For very small children, you can also use water-filled jars for a simpler snow globe.
Another Christmas decoration that is fun to make with the whole family is an angel made of a paper plate. These can be placed on your table, your mantle or even on top of your tree. These angels can also be strung on a festive string or ribbon and hung in a large doorway. You can choose to decorate the angels with paint, stickers or glitter, depending on the age and skill level of the project’s participants.