3 ideas for homemade Christmas gifts your Scouts can make

It’s Christmaaaas… well, nearly! Now that it’s December, we’re officially allowed to start talking about the festive season and all of the fun it brings.

We’re sure some of you have started planning your Christmas calendar along with exciting activities to build up the excitement within your Group, District and County.

For young people, it’s often difficult for them to buy their parents gifts by themselves, so giving a homemade gift is the perfect way to show their appreciation and get creative in the run-up to Christmas. Take a look at some homemade gift ideas you can help your Scouts make.

Christmas Cookies and Sweet Treats

An activity for closer to Christmas, sweet treats are always a success. For younger ones, you could pre-bake or buy pre-made cookies and decorate them with red, green and white icing with glitter and sprinkles. Or, if you have the facilities, you could bake and decorate them in your Group meeting.

Some other good festive treats include:

• Mini yule log – For easiness, buy un-iced mini chocolate swiss rolls. Make chocolate icing and get your members to ice them individually, using fork strokes to create texture. Decorate with holly leaf icing decorations!
• Snowy Chocolate Crackle Biscuits – Roll the dough in icing sugar to get the perfect snowy effect! View the recipe here.
• Christmas Truffles – Your young people can decorate their own boxes to gift these easy, no-bake chocolate truffles to make the perfect gift (you can use a microwave if you don’t have a hob). Find the recipe here.

Christmas Tree Ornaments

There are so many ways you can make Christmas tree ornaments, and using all kinds of resources! But our favourite is using items your Scouts can probably find on the premises of your hut!

It might be best to make the bases of a wooden block and tall stick for your Scouts so they can use this as a foundation for their creation. Their job is then to find small twigs and sticks and arrange them in a Christmas tree shape, using strong glue to stick them to the base. Once these are dry, they can decorate with glitter, tinsel, leaves and other small decorations like tiny baubles. They make for a great mantelpiece decoration and gift!

Christmas Cards

This crafty idea is less of a gift, but still likely to spread lots of Christmas cheer. An activity for all ages, card making is a fun way to show off your Scouts’ creative side.

Using Christmas themed craft supplies, this is an activity that can be easily and quickly done, and mixed in with the rest of your Christmassy ideas for your meetings in the run up to the big day.

You could also organise a competition where the winning designs form a selection of cards which can then be sold to fundraise for your Group. Take a look at some more fundraising ideas here.