5 Unique Homemade Gifts for Your Kids to Give

Some Grandparents have everything (especially all the love to give to their grandkids). So when the holidays roll around, it’s hard to know what to get for them. Keep reading to find thoughtful and unique homemade gifts that your kids can give to the Grandparents that have everything this season.

I’m realizing more and more as a mom, that I have to not buy into that dopamine high–literally purchasing it through giving my kids presents. Christmas isn’t about making all of our dreams come true. (At least not the materialistic ones.) One way to change this family pattern is to teach them about giving–Sometimes that can involve money, but sometimes that can involve time, energy and thought. And if you use those things, you are sure to create unique homemade gifts that not only give a gift but build the giver.

In our family we talk about the “Secular Christmas” and the Christian Christmas. Differentiating between the two has helped me enter into secular traditions–like Christmas gift giving–with more ease. Secular traditions are snow blasted everywhere. I don’t want my kids to feel like they are missing out as they are embedded in this culture, but at the same time, I want to teach a different tradition in our family.

Christmas is just another part of the culture where we are teaching our kids how to respond and interact in a Biblical way–like with justice, finances, and relationships. Plus, I have to say that a huge gift giver has married into our family. He arrives with stacks of presents piled high. Literally I can’t see his face sometimes because of all the gifts he is carrying. These are thoughtful presents that he knows my kids will loooove. His joy in gift giving and planning those gifts is infectious, and I love it.

And in this season we are trying to shepherd our kids away from that feeling of envy, that hunger for more things and towards a feeling of anticipation and expectation for our coming King. Sometimes that means toning down our participation in secular traditions or entering into them with a certain type of intention. So here’s a short list of unique homemade gifts your family can offer to loved ones to help build a tradition of giving.

1. Draw a Unique Portrait of a Family Member

My six year old drew the above picture. It depicts a man punching a bunch of monsters. (It’s not a far cry to have that be Grandpa punching a bunch of monsters.) Your portrait could look like this, with the hilarious description of it in your child’s words typed up like it was hanging on a gallery wall. Be creative and try and capture where your kids are at in their thinking and imagining right now. Not only will it be an unusual gift, possibly a hilarious gift, but it will also be a snapshot of your child’s ability and thinking at that age.

2. Act out a Family Story

Sometimes I think we neglect to tell our own family stories. We see them as ordinary, maybe because we’ve heard them so many times. We don’t realize the miraculousness of our own lives. Having your kids act out these family stories can help build the legends of your family and bless family members to know that their lives are being remembered and told.

Ideas for Family Stories to Act Out:

1. How Grandpa and Grandma met or got engaged
2. A family wedding (Use props and details from the wedding, like the type of flowers. Ham it up!)
3. A baby being born
4. Moving across the country
5. A memorable family vacation or holiday
6. Getting ready for church in the morning
7. A five minute sum up of Grandpa and Grandma’s lives. A speed biography!
8. And of course, ask the kids, they might remember a story that sticks out in particular.

Here’s some hot tips for making this unique gift work:

1. Have fun. If this gets too stressful and those involved are stuck on perfection, it won’t be a blessing to make this gift.
2. Break the story up into the beginning, middle and end chunks. If need be, you can even film it in these three chunks.
3. Use costumes. This can add a hilarious layer to the retelling. (Maybe you can even snag Grandpa’s favorite hat or shirt for the production.) If you need to, use name tags to identify the players.
4. Do you have kids who don’t want to participate? Be creative. Maybe they can be the director, camera man, narrator, or the tree that fell over the road and the reason why Grandma was late to her own wedding. This also works for super young kids that aren’t verbal yet. Can they hold a sign and toddle across the stage? See if you can get everyone participating. The more the merrier. If kids are shy being on camera, find something low barrier to help them participate. Maybe they are behind something and join in with a sock puppet.

Kids can perform this live at the holiday gathering and then you can record it and send it out to the relatives to enjoy. Or if Grandparents live far away or need to socially distance, upload the film to YouTube and send them their link to view it.

3. Create Stories with Relatives in them

My kids LOVE to hear stories about them. They also love to make stories up. Smash up these two things and have kids change a traditional fairy tale to be about Grandpa and Grandma for a unique homemade gift. You can find a book on your own book shelf to use as the mentor text, borrowing snippets of that story and then adding in your own details and names to make it about your family. Or have the kids write an entirely different story. I find this is best done when you have an outline or structure, such as:

1. It is helpful to the narrative for the story to have a beginning, middle and end.
2. The story includes familiar narrative clues or transitions such as: Once upon a time…Then they went into the forest…They came upon a…
3. The story has a problem that the main characters need to solve or a villain they need to defeat, with a clear solution or ending.

Talking through the above prompts and sketching those out on a piece of paper with your children for five minutes, can help this all go better. You can also just have your kids tell you the story. You type, while they talk. Then help add transition words and punctuation for clarity. Read it back to them, prompting them with questions to flesh out the narrative more.

For publication, print out what you typed up and have the kids draw a picture to go along with each page of text. You can also send your text and pictures to services like Snapfish and have them print a bound book. This might require some formatting and scanning in any pictures that your kids created. (Scanning is pretty easy now with scanning apps you can download on your phone.)

4. Practice and Sing a Song

COVID-19 canceled our Christmas concert. But my daughter, who loves wearing all the fancy dresses all the time, had already practiced and was so excited. On her own, she decided to practice more and then send out a recording to all of our family as her Christmas gift to them. It’s as simple as that-pick some favorite songs, sing them together a few times, and then record it and send it out. It’s nice to have the kids say a little message beforehand, like simply having the kids say why they picked or song or that the “best way to spread Christmas cheer is singing loud and clear”.

5. Compile a Family Quote Book

When I went on youth group trips during high school, we would write down all the funny things that people would say. Twenty years later, two words can still transport me to whole stories that have us doubled over in laugher! (Carpet Monster!) I was rummaging around in a box of old letters (Letters! I used to write boxes of them!) and found one of these quote lists. If you weren’t there, the phrases seem like non-sequiturs. But for us in the know, that old quote list brings me straight back to all the fun times we had.

If you don’t clean your plate, you’re going to have a bad day tomorrow.

Grandma Yoder

Quote lists could be like that–A compilation of funny things family members said around the dinner table or on vacation. Or they can be a compilation of the family’s famous sayings. Does Grandma have a saying for everything when it goes wrong? Does Uncle Bob always come up with the funniest sayings, that somehow don’t make sense but make you feel better? Write those done! Ask the kids and get submissions from family members.

Again, You can print these out, illustrate them, and have a very unique homemade gift that is just for your family. Don’t forget that it doesn’t just need to be the kids illustrating. It is hilarious and fun to see the adults try their hand at drawing too. I know that sometimes I don’t make time for that type of art because I’m not good at drawing at all, but it’s really important for my kids to see me participating gracefully and with joy in things that I don’t like and am not good at.

Creating Unique Homemade Gifts can be Fun

Of course you are going to have some stressful moments if you try and do homemade gifts. But that’s a given really in anything you do. And for me, I reach certain levels of stress at the Mall or Target anyway. Just make sure you aren’t scouring Pinterest for perfection and are now rage crafting.

Avoid rage crafting.

This moment isn’t just about creating a unique homemade gift, but about creating a philosophy (or maybe it’s a theology) around giving. And you’re doing that right there in the moment with your kiddo.

Do you have any tips on making unique homemade gifts for the family? Or integrating new family traditions or books to recommend on the subject? Drop a comment here! I would LOVE to hear about them. I have so much learning and growing to do in this area.

And if you are looking for gifts to give to the kids, check out this Christian Gift Guide for growing kids’ faith.