Thrifty Holiday Crafts

Emma and I made a mother-daughter outing to our local craft shop yesterday to see what was left in the post-Christmas sale section. We found some cute wooden Christmas ornaments, originally $0.99, on sale for $0.29. I let Emma chose four, and was originally planning to save them for the kids to decorate next Christmas. I “saved” them by putting them up on our tree (which we plan to leave up until January 6th). Emma asked to paint them this afternoon, and I couldn’t think of a good reason to make her wait. We’ll come up with plenty of Christmas crafts next December, so why not extend her enjoyment of Christmas a little longer?

Technorati Tags: toddler crafts,seasonal crafts

Emma painted the trains using Crayola Washable Kid's Paint. I gave her one paintbrush for each color, so she only had mixed colors at the end when she decided she wanted that effect. Here are the finished decorations – she decided to go quite minimalist on the last gingerbread man!

One tip for Crayola washable products that I learned from a friend: don’t use a stain remover, doing so sometimes sets the stain! If you wash clothes without any extra products, everything comes right out. Emma has actually never gotten paint on her clothes, but her brother doesn’t share her perfectionist personality.

Christmas card puzzle

For our craft today, we cut some Christmas cards into puzzle pieces. The puzzles work better if you back the cards with cereal boxes (or cardstock) for stability before cutting out (use a glue stick and be generous with the glue - and leave time for the glue to dry before cutting out. The non-printed side of cereal boxes sticks better than the printed side). If you have access to a laminator, I would back cards with a cereal box and then laminate. Another option is to back the cards with felt and then to build the puzzle on a felt board. Cut the card into more pieces for an older child.
I have no idea why this picture insists on showing up sideways - anyone know how to fix it? This seven-piece puzzle really tried Emma's patience, even though she generally likes puzzles. She did much better with 3-4 piece puzzles.

Jingle Bells

For some reason snow makes me think of bells - maybe because I read the "Little House on the Prairie" books so much as a kid and they have sleighbells on their winter sleighs?

We had a big snowstorm this weekend, and all the snow put me in the mood for bell-oriented crafts. Both of my kids enjoyed these two simple bell crafts.

We put bells on ribbons to make some more Christmas tree ornaments:
And I made some bell bracelets for Emma. She was really cute running around the house waving her arms around to make the bells ring.

I got the idea for the bell bracelets from this post at My Montessori Journey.

Stockings!

I finished the stockings tonight! My husband wound up cutting the letters out for me - first he cut squares and then he cut each letter our of a square. Count on an engineer to think up that way of keeping the letters the same size!

I think they turned out cute, although Johnny's is a tiny bit skewed to the left and Emma's goes maybe a tiny bit to the right. What can I say, I had lots of little "helping" hands! I love the way the letters look hand-sewn on, but it definitely took longer than I expected. My sister Catherine reminded me that her stocking (which I helped make at least a decade ago) has the letters of her name attached with iron-on fusing. The letters have stayed on all these years, and they still look great. So that's a quicker way to do it - and something that could be helpful even if you want to do the hand-stitching too since the fusing holds the letters in place.

Blog Favorites

My goal for today is to get our Christmas cards out (finally!), so I thought I'd post a few favorites from other blogs for those of you looking for cute activities to do with your kids.

Children's Art Bookmarks from craftpad - a cute and easy last-minute gift idea, especially if you have easy access to a laminator.

Paper Bag Gingerbread Garlands from Blissful Kids - older kids can cut these out themselves, and younger ones will enjoy coloring.

Meringue snowmen from elsie marley - these need quite a bit of parental help, but kids can put on the eyes, mouths, buttons, etc. and will definitely enjoy eating them.

Cinnamon ornaments from the Frugal Family Fun Blog - very easy to make, and they smell wonderful!

Work in progress

I decided to make matching family stockings this year. I made a pattern I'm happy with and cut them out, but I'm stuck figuribg out decorations. Any suggestions? I'm considering names (probably cut out of felt and sewn on), but haven't been able to free-draw them so they look nice and haven't found an online source. Any recommendations for nice-looking block letters? Any picture suggestions? I'd like these stockings to last, so I want the end result to look nice...
Here's the pattern I made, just in case anyone's curious. The extra fabric in the picture above is going to be sewn in half to make a stocking hanger. You can use the pattern to make your own stockings, or cut it out of some cereal boxes to make a this scrap paper stocking from no time for flash cards.

Gingerbread House!

I made some gingerbread using this recipe, and then found a great pattern for a gingerbread house over at Chocolate on My Cranium. I like this pattern because you can cut the entire house out of a single sheet of gingerbread.

I spread the dough out on top of some parchment paper on a cookie sheet, baked, cut the pieces out (in the pan), then put the pan back in the oven (with the oven off) to let the pieces harden up a little more. The picture is of the raw dough.


After 10 more minutes in the turned-off ofen, I took the parchment sheet (with the pieces) off the cookie sheet and laid it out on a rack to finish cooling. You can cut pieces out to look nicer than this, but I was making a house with a two-year-old and I wasn't being detail-oriented. My pieces are rather thick; next time I would probably spread the gingerbread more thinly (although the thickness did make it so the walls stood up very nicely).
We made some Royal Icing (1 Tablespoon meringue powder, 2 Tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon warm water, and 1 1/3 cups powdered sugar made enough for this house) and decorated. I put on the frosting and Emma stuck on M&Ms and mini marshmallows. Johnny sat on my lap and grabbed any M&Ms he could and stuffed them in his mouth as quickly as possible.

Emma taking a picture of her masterpiece.

Geometric Shapes Nativity Scene

I always like pictures that are made out of geometric shapes. I love the simplicity as well as the flexibility, and it's a fun way to talk with young children about different shapes and the way they fit together. This nativity scene was made using five triangles, three circles, two rectangles, one trapezoid, and one oval.

We made this out of felt because I plan to keep the pieces and use them to build different scenes over time, but you could make it out of construction paper and glue it together that way (or glue down felt pieces) just as easily. My two-year-old is barely beginning to understand the Christmas Story, and she likes learning about it in different ways.

This sketch shows how more clearly how the pieces go together. I actually cut it apart and used it as a pattern to create the pieces for the finished product, although if you look closely you'll notice I flipped the pieces for Mary's dress around.

Handprint Christmas Tree

MATERIALS:

• Colored paper (green, red, and brown)
• Scissors
• Glue
• Stickers (for decorations, optional)

STEPS:

1) Trace and cut out several handprints. I used four of my daughter's handprints and four of my son's handprints.
2) Paste together on red paper to form a tree. Cut out a star to put on top (I traced the shape from a cookie cutter) and a brown rectangle to be the stump. You could also cut out presents from other colors of paper.

3) Add stickers for tree decorations. My minimalist daughter chose to skip this step...

Reindeer craft

I got the idea for this craft from this post over at No Time for Flash Cards. Apparently, it's an elementary school standard but I'd never seen it before. Of course, I spent fewer than 6 months of my childhood in US elementary schools...

Emma had a blast making her reindeer and especially using liquid glue (I made the mistake of introducing her to it and now she won't have anything to do with glue sticks).

Gingerbread Man Craft

I couldn't get the photos for this to post, so I just have patterns. There are two patterns, for two different crafts.

The pattern on the right was designed to be cut out and decorated with stickers, fabric, yarn or colored paper. This gingerbread man has more space for more decoration :)

The pattern on the left is for a felt dress-up gingerbread man that you can dress up in the clothes I designed for the felt bears (see here and here for patterns, no sewing required).

Simple tree ornaments

This isn't a fancy decoration, but it's one even my 11-month-old could help make, with materials found in most households. If you want to dress it up, it looks cooler with glitter, but I didn't want my son putting glitter in his mouth (and it's more work to clean up than pieces of colored paper).

MATERIALS:

• Cereal box
• scissors
• colored paper
• glue
• hole puncher
• string or ribbon
• crayons (optional)

STEPS:

1. Cut shapes out of cereal boxes. I drew some shapes freehand, and traced cookie cutters for others.
2. Cut colored paper into small pieces. If you want, you can let your child color with crayons on the shapes you cut out of the cereal box while you cut up the pieces of colored paper.
3. For a very small child, put glue on the cereal box shapes and then give them the colored paper to add. Most 2- and 3-year-olds can put the glue on themselves.
4. Punch holes in tops of ornaments, add string or ribbon, and hang on tree.

I let my kids do this at our coffee table, which made the craft WAY messier than it would have been if they had been confined to our dining room table...

The ornaments look much nicer on the tree than on the coffee table, but I can't figure out how to take good pictures of a Christmas tree. All of my pictures are either washed out or too dark - any tips?

Holiday crafts for slightly older children

My camera and computer are having issues right now, so while I try to resolve those I thought I'd link to a couple of crafts that I thought looked neat for children slightly older than my two.

Beaded ornaments from Make and Takes made using plastic beads and pipe cleaners

Photo ornament from Her Cup Overfloweth made with a 5x7 photo, two brads, and some string or ribbon

Very Simple Advent Calendar

From No Time for Flash Cards - all you need is scissors, markers, glue, stickers, and colored paper. Perfect for toddlers.

Christmas Tree Ornaments

We have very few Christmas tree ornaments, and those we have are easily broken. I wanted to have a few ornaments that the kids could play with at the bottom of the tree, so Emma and I made some salt dough, got out the cookie cutters, and made these:


We used cookie cutters to make all of the shapes except the wreaths, and then I used a skewer to make holes for hanging. It's important to do this before baking the clay.

We made the salt dough by mixing 1/2 cup of salt, 1 cup of flour, 1/2 cup of water, and 1 tablespoon of olive oil together and then kneading in food coloring to make the different colors. Emma really enjoyed kneading in the different colors. Bake the clay on parchment paper at 300 degrees Fahrenheit for one hour.

I used gold embroidery floss (all six strands) to hang the ornaments on the tree.

Advent Calendars

Thinking of making an advent calendar? The Crafty Crow has the most diverse collection of ideas for advent calendars I've seen, all collected from different bloggers. Made with fabric, toilet paper rolls, candles, chewing gum, and those cute baby socks your child has outgrown, there's something for everyone! See the post here.