Craft: Upcycled Christmas Trees

Upcycled homemade Christmas tree decorations! These are beautiful! A guest post today that's shared by Rashmie of Mommy Labs.

I'm beyond delighted to share my daughter - Pari's - handmade Christmas trees with all you wonderful readers of hands on: as we grow! [smiles]

We at Mommy Labs love hoarding junk and then upcycling them into something artful. From disposable glasses to dozens of cardboard boxes, from the tags on new dresses to fabric scraps - there're very few things that can find their way to trash under our scanner eyes!

For these Christmas trees too, Pari sorted through our chest of drawers where we stash our junk and brought out a tall paper glass. She wanted one more - for her friend to make; but we only had one tall glass like that. I remembered the used birthday party hats that I had saved from last year.

 


After tearing off the golden paper, we had a whitish paper cone left of the hat that could be painted on nicely.

                   

So, she and her friend set about painting the glass and the cone with green tempera paint. They mixed 2-3 shades of green and some white paint to get the shade of their liking.

Once painted, we let them dry. In the meantime, they cut out a star using a stencil to make the tree topper. They smeared those with glitter and taped a straw - half the length behind each.




I drilled a hole on top of the paper glass tree and poked the straw inside. The star now sat a little above the trees.

They had already started to look so festive! 
                 
                 

Now was the time to rummage through the tiny version of a chest of drawers where we store all the tiny weeny junk - like - buttons, sparkly stars, beads etc.

The decorating was their favourite part.




Finally, Pari wanted to write some letters to Santa so she could fold them and place under the tree for Santa to read. She wants to write many more until Christmas. Kids and their innocent wishes!




Hope you like our upcycled Christmas trees.

Merry Christmas to you all and Happy Holidays!


If you'd like to get some more ideas for upcycled art/craft from junk, you can check these out on my blog:

• An Upcycled Artful Musical Dice
  
• Leaf Decoupage Candle Holder
• Self Portrait with Magazine Cuttings and Mixed Media

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Rashmie is a homeschooling mom to a 6-year old girl. She writes on Mommy Labs about creative learning for children with focus on open-ended art, integrating art and fun in literacy, and connecting our kids with nature. She loves photography, traveling and spending time in nature. You can connect with Mommy Labs on Facebook and Twitter.

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Craft: 3 Homemade Christmas Ornaments

Guest Post by    Three easy Christmas ornaments for preschoolers to make! A guest post today that's written and shared by JDaniel4's Mom.

For a number of reasons, the first being we didn't want JDaniel to accidentally knock over the tree or try to climb it, we haven’t had a full size Christmas tree.

We have had a table top tree instead.
This year things will be different.


We are going to put up a full size tree and I thought it would be fun to have JDaniel make some ornaments for it. 

Christmas Card Ball:

This ornament is super easy to make and looks so pretty when it is done.


Supplies:

• Old Christmas cards
• Scissors
• Hole punch
• Brass fasteners

Directions:

1. Cut the front of a Christmas card into strip a half an inch wide.
2. Place a hole in the same spot at the top and bottom of each card.
3. Stack the strips in the order they appeared on the front cover from left to right.
4. Place a brass fastener in the holes at the top and bottom of the strips.
5. Slowly pull each strip to the left until each strip is free of the others in the stack. You may need to bend the strips a little at the top and bottom to form a ball.

Ice Cream Cup Stick Snowflakes:

Supplies:

• Ice cream cup sticks
• Glitter Glue

Directions:

1. Place glitter glue on a ice cream cup stick in globs and smear all over the front of the stick.
2. Place a second stick on top of the first and repeat the process.
3. Keeping adding sticks to the stack until it looks like a snowflake to you.

Reindeer Handprint Ornament:

Supplies: 

• A sheet of brown felt or foam
• Brown paint
• Glue
• Glittery pipe cleaner
• Hole punch
• Cardboard from a cereal box
• Red marker

Directions:

1. Dip your child’s hand into brown paint and help them press it onto the brown foam/felt.
2. Glue the foam or felt onto a piece of cardboard cut from a cereal box with the colored side of the box facing out.
3. After letting it dry, cut around the handprint.
4. Using a hole punch create an eye hole in the palm of your handprint just above the thumb.
5. Color the tip of thumbprint red with the marker.
6. Cut a small slit in the palm of the handprint and thread the pipe cleaner through it.

I hope you have a wonderful time creating!

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My name is JDaniel4’s Mom and I blog at http://www.jdaniel4smom.com. As the mom of a three going on four year old boy, I  blog about our daily adventures in eating, playing, learning, and life. I am so thankful that Jamie is giving me the opportunity to share some crafts we have been doing at our house.

More Christmas Ornaments:

• 30 Homemade Christmas Ornaments for the Kids
• Christmas Tree Ornament

Current sponsors :  Fudoo Boards  :  A Mom with a Lesson Plan  :  CraftProjectIdeas.com

It's Playtime! : Paper Holiday Decorations

The Creative Christmas Countdown is well under way.
Mama Pea Pod has today's advent activity, Making Paper Decorations!

I found a few inspirational ideas from last week's It's Playtime to get us in the mood to get creating some wonderful paper decorations for today's Christmas Countdown activity!
 [Gratefully Growing in Grace: Paper Advent Activity Chain]


A classic paper decoration from Gratefully Growing in Grace. A paper chain garland, complete with activities on each link for the holidays!

Above, from left to right:

• A cute button wreath! Ready. Set. Read! created this brilliantly simple craft for the holidays!
• Collage together odds and ends wrapping paper and make some seriously cute ornaments! Love this idea from Toddler Approved! [Kind of reminds me of our wrapping paper stockings we did last year!]
• Create a snow globe with your very own snow scene! A pretty art decoration from I Heart Crafty Things.
• My Little Princess World made a tree of handprints and decorated it! 

High Five to these play friends!

[Go leave them a playful comment!]

[Please grab the featured badge on the right if you were featured]

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It's Playtime is a community for play loving bloggers to share ways to play.

Head on over to my playtime co-hosts:
The Imagination Tree, Messy Kids, Quirky Momma, Let the Children Play.

New to It's Playtime? Read How to Play to get all the details. 
Basically, share your play ideas at the party below and browse for more play ideas from others! 

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Happy Holidays!

Time to Play Away! - Link up your Play Posts!

[No blog? You can leave a comment here to share, too!]

Be sure to LIKE your favorite play ideas!

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Henry is 3 years. George is 1 year.

Current sponsors :  Fudoo Boards  :  A Mom with a Lesson Plan  :  CraftProjectIdeas.com

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Craft : Christmas Tree Ornament

Guest Post by    Today, a Christmas craft is shared by Kristina at Toddler Approved.  A simple tree ornament to start decorating!  The possibilities really are endless with this ornament!

Hi hands on : as we grow readers! I am so excited to be visting from Toddler Approved! I have a simple, but special little project to share with you today.

At our house we get a small Christmas tree each year for the kids and decorate it solely with homemade ornaments. Last year I had a newborn and this was a really special activity for my 3-yr-old son and I to work on together since he was feeling a little worried about his new little sister.

We just started making ornaments for this year and this button tree was our first one. 

Here's how we made it...

Materials Needed: 

• green felt
• foam sheet
• ribbon
• various sized/colored buttons
• glue gun
• Elmer's glue.

Directions:

1. Print out a tree template or draw your own. Cut it out.

2. Trace it onto foam and felt and cut it out.

3. Use the glue gun to attach the felt to the foam back [this part is for adults only unless you have older kids that can be supervised with the glue gun].

4. Sort through your buttons and choose your favorites and then use Elmer's glue to decorate the tree with buttons or other colorful items.

5. Use an awl or the edge of scissors to make a hole through the top of the tree.

6. Thread a piece of ribbon through the hole and tie a knot to make a loop.

7. Have your little one hang this on your Christmas tree... and then make a few more!

You could also decorate the tree with puffy paint or fuzzy or sparkly pom poms... the possibilities are endless.

Simple crafts like this are perfect for ornaments because we usually want to make more than one for our tree. 

Skills you can work on during this activity:

• button sorting by shape, color, and size
• counting buttons [How many blue buttons do you have? How about red?]
• creating patterns
• expanding sentences [if your child says, "I see blue' you could model how to expand the sentence to add more description- "I see a blue button with four holes"]
• describing colors, shapes, and sizes

What other simple items could you use

to decorate your tree ornament?

Do you have a favorite homemade ornament? 

These are a few of ours from last year:

Stained Glass Cookie/Ornament

Foam Present Ornament

Foam Santa Ornament

Come share the link or your ornament idea over on the hands on: as we grow or Toddler Approved Facebook page today. We can't wait to see your ideas! 

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I’m Kristina, a mom of two [a preschooler and baby] and a former Special Education teacher for children with communication disabilities. I write about our creative explorations over at Toddler Approved. I blog alongside one of my best friends and we love sharing ideas with each other and our readers. My main interest is to find ways to make life a little more fun and creative. I also love to embed language learning into everything that we do. 

More Christmas Ornaments:

• 30 Homemade Ornaments for the Kids
• 3 Homemade Christmas Ornaments

Current sponsors :  Fudoo Boards  :  A Mom with a Lesson Plan  :  CraftProjectIdeas.com

Winter Craft : Snowman Puppets!

I'm grateful to have such wonderful friends in the blog world to allow me to take a little bit of a break this month to spend more time with my family during the holidays. Today's post is written and shared by Terri at My Creative Family.  A fun craft to create with the kids, and play with it afterwards!  Terri teaches us how to make snowman finger puppets! So adorable!

Hi, I'm Terri from My Creative Family. In order to give Jamie a much needed break, I'm here to share a fun craft with you, snowman finger puppets.

See those cute little guys [or ladies if you prefer].
They're fun and fuzzy and made entirely from items we had about the house.

Supplies needed:

• Cardboard from an empty cracker or cereal box [you will want to use thin cardboard].
• White craft paint
• Glue
• Cotton balls
• Colored beads [sequins, buttons or googly eyes would also work]
• Scraps of yarn

Start by drawing a snowman shape on your cardboard and cutting it out.
Don't worry about pencil marks. They will soon get covered up.
While you're cutting, you'll also need an additional strip of cardboard [about 4 - 5 inches long].
Paint your snowman shape white.

While your paint is drying a bit, take your cotton balls and start separating them.
Stretch them, unroll them, and get rid of that ball shape!

Next, add glue. Add a lot of glue.
This is the part that gets a little bit sticky and a little bit messy, but it's worth it.
Take all that cotton and press into the glue. 
You want to cover the entire snowman.

Now that your snowman is nice and fuzzy, it's time to embellish! 
We used small beads. But, this is the point where you can be creative and use what you have.
Use sequins, googly eyes, or small bits of paper. Anything would work here!

If you're working with small children and don't really want to use all the small bits to embellish, you can always use dots of paint for your snowman's face.

When gluing on our beads, we made sure to use a lot of glue and to really press down so it would adhere to the cardboard and not just the cotton.

When you're satisfied with your embellishing, take your yarn and make a scarf. 
I used three strips of yarn and tied it around each snowman's neck.
Again, use what you have. Fabric scraps would also make cute scarves.

At this point, it's time to turn them into finger puppets!

Grab that extra strip of cardboard and roll it into a ring. 
Tape it to the bottom of the backside of your snowman.

I found that little fingers have an easier time using these as finger puppets if the ring is close to the bottom.

Use strong tape or several strips if you find that your cardboard wants to unroll [like the stubborn cracker box we had].

Now, go and have fun!
Sing a few rounds of Frosty the Snowman and play with your new finger puppets!

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I'm Terri, married, 30-something, stay-at-home mom to two girls. I still feel like a kid at heart. I love arts & crafts time, picture books and a good cartoon. I want to nurture my girls, teach them, let them discover the world all while guiding them with my sometimes capable, but not always, hands.


Author of My Creative Family.

Current sponsors :  Fudoo Boards  :  A Mom with a Lesson Plan  :  CraftProjectIdeas.com

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