Take-Home Craft Ideas for Winter: Perfect for Day Services for Seniors
Many people enjoy doing crafts at nursing homes and day service centers, don’t they?
This time, we’re introducing craft ideas for seniors to make in winter that they can take home from day service!
We’ve gathered easy-to-prepare projects, including those that use recycled materials and supplies from 100-yen shops.
When it comes to crafts, aside from large decorations to hang on the wall, most items can be taken home.
More intricate projects that require fine motor skills may take several days to complete, but the sense of accomplishment and joy when they’re finished is exceptional.
Of course, there are also cute crafts that can be made in a single day, so please use these ideas as a reference for craft activities at nursing homes and day service centers.
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[For Seniors] Winter Take-Home Craft Ideas for Day Services (111–120)
Toilet paper Santa Claus
A toilet paper roll transforms into an adorable Santa Claus doll! First, cover the toilet paper roll with felt in Santa colors like red and white.
For Santa’s fluffy beard and the fur-like parts on his hat, use cotton or fluffy yarn.
For the facial features like the eyes and nose, we recommend using small pieces of felt cut to shape, stick-on eyes, or felt balls.
You can also add decorations to the outfit if you like! Give it a try and make a warm, charming Santa doll.
Doll-style towel hanger
Here’s a project that turns a hand towel into a cute little doll.
If the hand towel you always use at home looked like a doll, it might lift the spirits of older adults, too.
Use a foam ball to make the doll’s face, then attach craft eyes and yarn for hair.
After fixing the facial parts to a wooden clip, decorate it with ribbons and beads.
Attach a towel folded into a triangle to the wooden clip, and your doll-style towel hanger is complete.
You can make one for yourself, and it would also make a delightful gift for families of older adults.
name keychain
Here’s how to make a name keychain using plastic bottle caps.
Prepare caps in your favorite colors and cut them into small pieces.
Arrange the pieces on a sheet of baking paper, cover with another sheet, and press with a high-heat iron to melt the plastic.
Once it cools and hardens, cut it into your desired shape with scissors.
Punch a hole with an awl, add alphabet or other stickers, thread a chain through, and you’re done.
It makes a great little gift, so give it a try!
Heart coaster
How about an easy-to-make heart-shaped felt coaster? You don’t even need to sew—just use glue.
Round the edges and cut two pieces of felt into the same shape, then make vertical slits in both.
Interlace the slits one by one, folding them together like a weave.
Glue the last section to finish.
If you don’t round the edges or leave excess, you can weave with strip-shaped felt to make a square coaster.
Try different color combinations you like.
Heart-shaped trinket box
For one of winter’s big events—Valentine’s Day—heart motifs are a classic, aren’t they? Let’s make a box with a large heart prominently featured out of origami to enhance the holiday’s happy atmosphere.
When creating the box parts, it’s important to crease well, fold in the edges, and make firm reverse folds so the corners and sides are sturdy.
Of the two boxes of different sizes, use one as the lid and attach the heart in a prominent spot to finish.
Add your own originality with choices like the heart’s size and differences in color between the box and the lid.
Heart Pom Pom
This is a heart-shaped pom-pom made by weaving yarn onto a fork.
It’s also a fun twist that everyday tableware can become a knitting tool.
Thread the yarn through the middle and one groove of the fork, wrap the yarn around the whole fork, then use the yarn threaded through the center to tie everything together and remove the fork.
Cut open the looped parts and trim to finish the pom-pom.
Combine three pom-poms to create a heart shape.
It’s important to use pom-poms of the same size, so pay close attention to the number of wraps and how widely the yarn spreads.
A pine cone from a cedar tree like a rose
There are many kinds of pine cones, and among them the most striking is the cedar cone.
Because they don’t produce seeds until the tree is over 30 years old, they’re one of the rarer types of cones.
What’s more, their shape looks just like a rose, so they’re called “cedar roses.” This time, let’s make a flower arrangement with cedar roses.
Simply soaking cedar roses in bleach will remove the color and give them a refined, weathered look.
Then, by coating them with color spray, you can create a flower arrangement in any style you like.
