An ITLT Collection of DIY Holiday Crafts to Create and Donate

In an attempt to share these special projects more efficiently, I'm assembling all of our holiday related crafts into one post! These are awesome projects that you create quite simply, either by yourself or with the help of friends and family, and donate to a local in-need center. I'll briefly explain what we did, and you can check out the links (titles) for more details!



Create holiday cards for your local homeless center

We created and collected about 300 holiday cards last year between my second grade Enrichment classes and the LAVC (Los Angeles Valley College) students that visited our ASU table (Associated Student Union) at the holiday club day. One of our local missions, The Midnight Mission in DTLA, has a mail center where their homeless guests check to see if they have mail. Whether they did or didn't originally, we made sure that this holiday season there would be a holiday card waiting for them!

Adopt a family through your local resource center

One of the clubs at the community college adopted a family through MEND Poverty, an amazing local resource center. Two years ago, my family and I adopted a family through another organization in NYC.  It was very easy to follow detailed lists to provide exactly what they needed; often household necessities or clothes, they rarely ever requested toys or presents, so it was fun to add those in!

Create a DIY ornament wreath

I LOVED making this wreath. The mini ornaments were in a tube at Target (10 for $1) so it was very inexpensive to make. I packaged and sent this with the club who adopted a family. They were purchasing kitchen supplies and other essentials, so I thought it might be nice to provide a colorful holiday decoration in their new home. Decorations were low if even on the priority list, but it provided some smiles.

Create DIY stockings

We also created stockings for the family. They were in a situation where they weren't coming in with much on anything, so again, holiday decorations were simply supposed to make their new place feel like home. That's me making mine!

Build little snowmen for children at a local resource center

This craft was sooo silly and fun to make. Using socks and rice, we created Olaf and friends! We donated a bunch of them to local kids at Valley of Hope. An amazing woman provides mental health services to underserved, victimized children and their families living with trauma, at no cost to them, and she reached out to ITLT saying that her clients would love these goofy snowmen.


More holiday craft ideas made with and for kids at a local center