Back to Gradeschoolers

BusyGRADESCHOOLERS

Seasonal Projects on a Shoestring
By Sandy Fleming

Here are a few quick and inexpensive craft ideas to keep your children entertained over the holiday season!

Help your young child count the days until Christmas (or any other exciting event!) by making an old-fashioned Christmas chain from construction paper. Cut strips of colored paper about ½" to 1" wide and 8-12 inches long. Fasten the first into a circle using glue, tape or staples. Put the next strip inside the first and close it to make another link in the chain. Give your chain the same number of links as the number of days until Christmas. Hang where your child can reach it, and
make a daily routine of pulling one link off. As the chain grows shorter, so does the waiting time, and you can practice counting each day as you tally the links left on the chain.

Create a winter scene by making a lake and snow from a small mirror and cotton balls. Use gumdrops, marshmallows and toothpicks to fashion people, snowmen and trees. Graham crackers make wonderful houses when you use icing for glue. Use your imagination to create other parts of your winter wonderland!

Create Christmas ornaments from old cards, canning jar lids and sewing trim scraps. Choose two pictures from old Christmas cards and trace the flat sealing canning lid around them so the picture is within the circle. Cut them out and glue one to each side of the flat lid. Glue the lid inside the ring, and decorate the outside of the rim with felt and/or sewing trim such as lace or rick-rack. Add a yarn or string loop for a hanger.

Use your cookie cutters as tracing patterns and trace around old Christmas card pictures and cut them out. Make two pictures with each shape. Glue the backs together so that the pictures show. Punch a hole in the top and add a hanger. Decorate with glitter around the edges.

Remember that most of the fun of projects is in the "doing." Have your camera on hand to capture the moment, and add the pictures to your child's photo album.

Sandy Fleming is an educator, author and workshop facilitator. She resides in southern Michigan with her husband and three daughters. Sandy leads workshops for daycare providers and parents in the region, tutors students, volunteers for Girl Scouts and her church, and teaches online classes for adults and children. She loves to make new friends, so please drop her an e-mail at kids@busyparentsonline.com