Sunday, December 2, 2012

Christmas Crafts for kids

So it's that time of year when we start doing our fun Christmas crafting.  We've made our Jesus Tree and started our Jesse Tree and begun our Advent Wreath.  We've also been making fun Christmas crafts just to celebrate the season....





As I blogged briefly for the Jesus Tree- giving our hearts and hands to Jesus for this coming year is a tradition in our household.  Each year we make a handprint at Christmas on a red heart of construction paper and then pray together asking Jesus to use our hearts and hands for his service in the coming year.  Then we place them inside the gold wrapped box and give it to Jesus under the tree.  I started this when my son was 1.  My son has mild cerebral palsy and it was difficult for him to use his hands well and manipulate things when he was young, especially.  Many "crafts" families did with their small children were out for Christmas for us.  So weren't many of the things I can do with my daughter now by way of devotions because he didn't have the attention span or understanding.  So....this was something that I came up with that I knew I could do with him every year, help him understand the meaning of Christmas, add another child to so he'd work at it with a sibling down the road and it had some sensory element that would engage him without requiring any fine motor skills.  It's worked well for our family.  The tag says:  "To: Jesus  From: Mason and Sarah   I give my heart and hands this Christmas to you for your service in the coming year."





 Sarah's handprint Christmas Tree and Mason's handprint tree.  We used green finger paint and then hot glued glitter pom-poms, pipe cleaners and some confetti to our "trees".  They had a blast.




Making puff paint snowmen with glue and shaving cream!  It's so easy.  Just add white Elmer's glue and shaving cream in equal portions to a paper plate and mix them in good.  Then let the kids create.  We pre-cut out eyes, noses, hats, gloves, arms and buttons with construction paper and just stuck them in the wet snowman and they stuck well.  This was a sensory blast for the kids.


Mexican Christmas pinata - learning about how Mexico celebrates Christmas!  We made this with a grocery bag and various printed Christmas tissue paper.  We filled it with goodies for our party coming this week...this is a sneak preview of our Christmas Around the World Party coming!



3 comments:

  1. Such sweet memories you are making! Love those hand trees.

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    1. When you say 'equal parts', shaving cream seems pretty fluffy so do you mean a LOT of glue to make it equal to the volume of the shaving cream?

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    2. Hi Summer - I'm not much of a measurer - I am a dump cook and dump crafter! LOL I would say that I eye ball it all so that there is about an equal amount of each. However, you can't go wrong with puff paint -so even if you put too much or too little glue - it still works! :) So go for it! Blessings - Colleen

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