Light Up Christmas Card STEM activity for kids

These DIY Light-up Christmas cards are easy and fun to make. A wonderful STEM themed Christmas activity for kids!

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DIY light-up Christmas cards are easy to make, and they double as a great STEM engineering exercise for your kids! I first learned about paper circuits a few months ago, when AgIC sent me their light-up card starter kit to play with. We put together the cute birthday card that comes in the kit and then it went back on the shelf for a few months. School was starting, there was a lot going on, and I didn’t have a project in mind. Then I started seeing Christmas lights and I knew what I wanted to make with the kids!

DIY Light-up Christmas Cards Tutorial

We pulled out our circuit pen and paper and drew a simple circuit, then added the batteries and LEDS (this link goes to more graceful LEDs that have since been developed by AgIC. Quick safety note: button batteries are not toys. Swallowing them is very dangerous. Please watch your kids carefully if they are involved in a project like this, and store them out of reach of children.

The kids were super excited to see all the lights lit up once we had everything put together! We drew and colored a simple tree to create this fun DIY light-up Christmas card!

This kit is a very fun basic introduction to circuits for kids! If you are looking for another easy circuit building activity, try our light-up bugs – they use regular C batteries! The Snap Circuits LIGHT set (affiliate link) is a wonderful low-supervision way for kids to explore lights and circuits in more depth. We have three different Snap Circuits sets, and the LIGHT set is everyone’s favorite!

My kids are loving this type of engineering activities lately! Do you have one that we should try next? This light-up Thanksgiving turkey circuit craft from Left Brain Craft Brain is pretty adorable!

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