Handprint Christmas Crafts for Toddlers

Looking for an easy and festive craft to do to capture this holiday season with your kids? These Handprint Christmas Crafts are the perfect way to create keepsakes and you can even let your toddlers lend a hand and explore their creativity! With just a few sheets of colored paper, scissors, and glue, you can turn your child’s handprints into Santa, Rudolph, a Christmas tree, and even cheerful winter birds — adorable decorations made from their own little hands. Plus, these handprint crafts are SO much less messy than painted handprints and much less need for perfection the first try. A very important thing in my house!

Materials You’ll Need

• Colored construction paper (red, white, brown, black, green, yellow, beige, blue)
• Pencil
• Scissors (adult use or supervised)
• Glue stick or school glue
• Googly eyes (optional but super cute!)
• Pink or red marker for cheeks and noses

Handprint Hack: The Easy Way to Get the Perfect Outline

If you’ve ever tried tracing a toddler’s hand, you know it can make you want to give up on the project before you even start, because if you can’t even get your toddler’s hand traced how are you going to get any of the rest of it done? And then somehow you get them wrangled and lift up their hand after tracing and their pinky is the size of their thumb and thumb is the size of their pinky??? I introduce to you… the simple trick that saved my sanity and makes all my cute handprint crafts. What’s the trick? Easy, just scan your child’s hand using a flatbed scanner instead.

Here’s how:

1. Have your child gently place their hand flat on the scanner bed (palm down).
2. Do a quick scan — it takes just a few seconds.
3. Print out the hand outline at full size or scale it down for smaller crafts.
4. Cut out the handprint from the scanned image – ta da!

Now you have a perfectly still handprint template you can trace onto any color of paper — no chasing a pencil around tiny fingers required! This hack also lets you reuse the handprint again and again for ornaments, cards, or future craft projects. I always put my kids name, month, and year on it so I know who and when this adorable little handprint came from.

How to Make Each Handprint Craft

1. Handprint Santa

1. Trace your child’s hand (or easy premade scanned template from above!) on white paper and cut it out — this will be Santa’s beard. Trace a second time on red paper – this will be Santa’s hat.
2. Cut a circle or oval from beige or light brown paper for Santa’s face and glue it to the top of the handprint.
3. Cut the red handprint in half right across the palm so you’re only left with the thumb and bottom of the hand. Place this over the white handprint and top it with a white pom-pom or construction paper circle and trim strip.
4. Draw or glue on a tiny nose and rosy cheeks.

Tip: For an extra sensory element, use cotton balls for the hat’s fluff and beard!

2. Handprint Santa Suit

1. Trace your child’s hand (or easy premade scanned template from above!) on red paper and cut it out.
2. Add a black paper strip across the palm for Santa’s belt.
3. Cut a small yellow square to make a buckle and glue it in the center.
4. You can even add white cuffs or buttons if you’d like a little more detail!

Variation: Use this as a Christmas card front and write “Ho Ho Ho!” on the fingers.

3. Handprint Reindeer

1. Trace your child’s hand (or easy premade scanned template from above!) on brown paper and cut it out.
2. Glue on two googly eyes and a big red nose (Rudolph style!).
3. You can add black yarn and tiny pom poms to look like Christmas lights tangled in the antlers or use pipe cleaners for a fun 3-D look.

Tip: Use the thumb as the reindeer’s head and the fingers as antlers for a cute twist.

4. Handprint Birds

These cheerful red handprint birds are a wonderful winter craft idea. They look especially sweet perched on a paper tree branch and can be used all winter long, not just Christmas!

1. Trace your child’s hand (or easy premade scanned template from above!) on red paper and cut it out.
2. Glue on a yellow paper triangle for a beak and small yellow feet.
3. Add a googly eye and a brown paper tree branch for your birds to sit on.

Variation: Try blue or white paper to make snowy winter birds, or make a family of cardinals (use different kids hands for different sized birds!) for a festive touch.

5. Handprint Christmas Tree

Turn a few green handprints into a beautiful holiday tree!

1. Trace your child’s hand (or easy premade scanned template from above!) several times on green paper and cut out each shape.
2. Layer and glue the handprints so the fingers point downward, creating a tree shape.
3. Add a yellow paper star on top and small squares or circles of paper for ornaments.

Tip: For extra sparkle, use glitter glue or small sticker gems to decorate the tree. Buttons look cute too!

Developmental Benefits of This Craft

Handprint crafts are not only adorable keepsakes — they also help toddlers develop:

• Fine motor skills: Tracing, cutting (with supervision), and gluing all strengthen coordination.
• Color recognition: Talking about the different colors (red, brown, green, white) reinforces early learning.
• Creativity and self-expression: Kids love seeing how their hands become part of the art!
• Sensory exploration: Textures like paper, glue, and googly eyes add tactile fun.

Display or Gift Ideas

These handprint Christmas crafts make wonderful:

• Homemade Christmas cards
• Ornaments (laminate or glue onto cardstock and add a ribbon)
• Framed keepsakes to remember those tiny hands for years to come
• Wall art or classroom decorations/garland for a festive touch in the classroom

Christmas handprint crafts are such a simple yet sentimental way to celebrate the season with your toddler. Whether it’s a jolly Santa, a red nosed reindeer, or a Christmas tree full of color, each one captures a special holiday memory — and those little hands that grow far too fast. I’m not the only one crying over those chubby baby fingers turning into lanky kid hands, am I???