As the days start to get shorter, kids can start to feel bored and pent up indoors, particularly when the holidays end and schedules return to normal. When this happens, consider making some fun winter crafts that you can use to brighten up your house and make it a little more cheerful inside. Depending on when you start, you can even use a few of these as decorations over the holiday, or save them for next year to put them out and get some additional use out of them.

Painted Pinecones

Create some beautiful winter decorations with pinecones and some iridescent paint medium. Iridescent medium can be applied to the pinecone spines just like paint. When it dries, however, the medium becomes transparent, leaving behind only a sparkling shine that makes it look as though the pinecones have been left outside in the frost. You can also add the medium to any paint to make your blues, reds, and greens sparkle as well. Tie a ribbon onto the ends of your finished pinecones and use them as ornaments, or hang them in the windows to catch the light.

Salty Snow Scene

This is a fun craft for with children who enjoy the process of watching an almost magical change in their handiwork.  Have your kids draw a snowman or other winter picture on a piece of heavy construction paper. Make sure that they do not cover all the areas of the paper with crayon; some of the paper needs to stay bare for the effect to work.

Dissolve a cup of Epsom salts into two cups of warm water; this needs to be fairly thick and heavy when you are done mixing. Have your child paint the salt water over the finished drawing. When the water dries, it will leave behind salt crystals on the paper that will make it look as though it has been snowing in their scene. If you’d like, you can also add a drop or two of blue food coloring to the water to give the entire picture an icy blue sheen to it at the same time.