Decorate Your Home for Any Holiday!
Activity Guide. January 2026.
This project is inspired by The House Without Lights: A Glowing Celebration of Joy, Warmth, and Home, written by Reem Faruqi and illustrated by Nadia Alam. This book tells the story of a House who waits patiently for its family to install lights in time for winter, much like the neighboring houses that decorate with lights for Diwali, Hanukkah and Christmas. But the yuletide passes and House realizes that some families don’t celebrate winter holidays. After the neighboring houses shed their decor and lights, it’s House’s time to shine, for Huda and her family decorate their home in time for Eid.
Families get together to celebrate cultural and religious traditions, often decorating their homes with ornaments, lights, and art. While Christians and Jewish folk celebrate their holidays in December, Muslim families like Huda’s are looking forward to Eid Mubarak, which falls on the end of March in 2026. Different households celebrate at different times of the year, but they celebrate just the same.
The cultural and religious diversity in our communities is beautiful! All year round, there are opportunities to decorate our homes to celebrate togetherness and spread joy with our friends and families. No matter what holiday or season, home feels more cozy and complete when we make decorations by hand. Take a look at some of the ways that we use creative reuse materials to make decor for our homes during the holidays.
We've added The House Without Lights: A Glowing Celebration of Joy, Warmth, and Home to the Chill Zone at Rediscover Center. Find this book during your next visit for some holiday inspiration.
STEP 1 - Plan your decor craft project
In The House Without Lights: A Glowing Celebration of Joy, Warmth, and Home, House takes pride in the way it sparkles with lights. But other decorations add to the magic! Here's a small list of what you could make. Pick one that you want to create:
- Banners & Garlands
- Standing Sculptures & Centerpieces
- Hanging Decorations/Ornaments
- Greeting Cards
*PRO-TIP: Sketch out multiple ideas so you can plan out which option might be the best considering the time, materials, and skills you have to create your look.
Things to consider:
1. Banners & Garlands
Banners and garlands are a great way to line doorways or walls.
2. Standing Sculptures and Centerpieces
Make something that sits on a table. Dioramas make for great holiday sculptures. Other forms might make great containers for artificial lights, if you have any laying around!
3. Hanging Decorations/Ornaments
Make little trinkets you can hang all over lights, cabinet knobs, or even the infamous Christmas Tree.
3. Greeting Cards
The easiest way to spread joy with others is to make fun, festive cards to give!
STEP 2 - Gather Your Materials
After deciding on your plan, gather some materials. We recommend the list below:
Tools
- Canary Cutter
- Screwdriver
- Scissors
- Markers
- Tape
- Brads
- Hot Glue Gun & Glue
- *Optional: Sewing kit
Many of these tools can be found in our Tinkering Toolkit.
Making Materials
- Cardboard
- Paperboard/flyers/junk mail with fun colors
- Colored scrap papers and other fun textures like mylar
- Ribbons
- Fabrics of choice
- *Optional: Other Creative Reuse Materials like corks, bottle caps, etc.
STEP 3 - Put them all together and make your decor!
Using your sketch as a guide, create your decorations using fabric, paper, and recycled materials such as cardboard, paperboard and other trinkets. Boldly repurpose toys, tubes, and anything you find around the house (ask an adult before modifying or cutting an existing object that you found). Remember the Cardboard Connections from the Boxitectures activity guide? Use these techniques to put your parts together. Explore different textures from picking cardboard apart, ripping paper or using colorful spam mail in unexpected ways for playful making.
ADULT HELPERS
For any tips on how to use specific tools safely, visit our Youtube library for Tiny Techniques.
RESOURCES
Visit the Techniques tab in Rediscover Center's Pedagogy Resources to access our Tiny Techniques videos and get tips for working safely and efficiently with tools.
Once you have finished your decor, share it with friends and family. When you use scraps and recycled materials, it means no new plastics or materials were taken from natural resources. Great job! If you want to share a picture on social media, be sure to tag @rediscoverctr. We'd love to see what you made!
