Glitter Christmas Card Ornaments

I'm so excited to be participating in the 20 Days of Kid-Made Ornaments series hosted by  Mama Miss.

With Christmas only a couple of weeks away we have been spending lots of time creating fun holiday crafts! Today I'd like to share our glitter Christmas card ornaments. This is a great way to up-cycle those old or unused Christmas cards!

I had a stash of unused Christmas cards that was a variety pack so it had various card themes: a manger scene, Christmas decorated house, Christmas tree, etc.

First I cut around the cards to get rid of any empty space and punched a hole at the top. I did this ahead of time because my girls are young and it would be difficult for them to cut evenly but it would be a great task for an older child to help with.

Next is the fun glitter and glue part! This can get a bit messy especially when you have a glitter happy 3 year old helping out, but the girls loved creating with the glitter!

The girls used q-tips to spread glue wherever they wanted the glitter to show on the card. Once they were done with the glue they added the colored glitter to the ornament.

The more glitter the better so it's okay if they get a little crazy with the glitter! :) After they applied the glitter we shook off the access glitter and let them dry.

Once they dried we added the ribbon through the punched hole and there we had our new Christmas Glittery Ornaments!

They look great on the tree and not too difficult to make if you don't mind a little bit of a glittery mess!

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For more ornament inspiration be sure to check out the Kid-Made Christmas Ornament Pinterest Board here: Kid-Made Ornament Pinterest Board

If you have a kid-made ornament you would like to share be sure to stop by this link up over at Mama Miss, check out all the crafty ornament ideas and add your own!

Oh and one more thing: I'm sharing this day in the kid-made ornament series with these fabulous ladies:

Mama Papa Bubba

Me Me Tales

So head on over to their blogs for more ornament fun!

Button Christmas Ornaments

We had so much fun creating these simple button Christmas ornaments. All you need are sparkle foam sticker paper (I found mine at JoAnn Fabrics), ribbon stickers, red, white, and green buttons, glue, index cards, ribbon and a hole puncher.

We decided to make the candy canes and wreaths but you could easily make other Holiday symbols as well.

Ahead of time, I cut up the index cards and foam sticker paper into small squares and then drew the candy cane and wreath shapes onto the foam sheets. That way my girls could easily follow the pattern and glue the buttons in each shape.

Gluing those little buttons is great fine motor skill practice for little hands! I also like to use q-tips and glue in a bowl. It seems to make it easier for young children to spread the glue onto projects.

Once they were done gluing the buttons and it dried I punched a hole at the top and tied a ribbon through. Now they are all ready to to display on our Christmas Tree!

These would also be a great gift for kids to make for friends and family! Another idea is to add a magnet sticker to the back and use them for  holiday magnets!

My girls liked the candy cane better but I was partial to wreath! Do you have a favorite?

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Advent Calendar For Young Kids 2013

We had so much fun with out Advent Calendar last year as the girls were old enough to really get into it and enjoy the activities! You can check out last years post here: Advent Calendar 2012

I'm really looking forward to continuing this tradition with them this year!

Just like I posted last year we try to keep it simple by combining fun family events with simple activities and even include ways to give back during the holiday season.

Although our list is very similar to last years I thought I would share it anyway as it does include a few new items. As stated last year most of the new items on the list (new ornament,  new coloring book etc.) were purchased at the dollar aisle or The Dollar Store.

1. Hot Coco Bar and put up the tree
2. Buy toys for Wish Tree Gift (Gifts to help needy children in the community)
3. Read A New Christmas Story
4. Write A Letter To Santa
5. Pick toys out of our own collection to donate
6. See Santa at The Mall
7. Cookies with Santa at our church
8. Go on a sleigh ride (neighborhood holiday party)
9. Santa chocolate treat
10. Decorate Foam Snowmen ($1 aisle at Target)
11. New Christmas Ornament to put on tree
12. Donate to Wings ( local shelter for women and children)
13. Family Christmas Movie Night
14. New candy cane to put on tree
15. Go see The Zoo lights
16. Read Christmas Stories in front of the tree
17. New Christmas coloring book
18. Go see Christmas lights in our PJ's while listening to Xmas music
19. Make ornaments for family gifts
20. Make Gingerbread House
21. Read The Christmas Story and Christmas song family sing along with guitars
22. Decorate Christmas Cookie Party
23. Hot Coco with Mrs. Claus
24. Open 1 present (new pj's) and sprinkle reindeer food
25. Merry Christmas (chocolate treat)

What's on your Advent Calendar? Anything your family enjoys that I missed?

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Open ended Christmas Art

While I love doing projects with my kids that have an end in mind, projects that are suppose to create something specific I also truly believe in the value of exposing our children to open ended and child directed art forms. This philosophy aligns with aspects of The Reggio Emilia Approach. I used to be a preschool teacher in a Reggio school and I saw first hand the benefits of child directed/open ended art.

We do a ton of open ended art that goes un-blogged/un-documented simply because it's created in the moment and unplanned. This one however was planned and set up ahead of time.

I started with setting up a variety of Christmas themed materials. Bows, green and red paint, glitter, scissors and green and red tissue paper squares.

I placed the materials out for the girls to explore and experiment with. Again, I had no end product in mind. The idea was simply to allow them to use the materials however they wanted. 

They both immediately started painting. 

They experimented with mixing the colors red and green.

 My 4 year old was the first to add the glitter and use the tissue paper to stick on the paper.

 Jillian my 2 year old enjoyed cutting up the tissue into small pieces.

They both used all the materials and explored with different ways to add them to their art work. They were truly engaged and encouraged to take their time! All the while we had Christmas music playing while we made our creations next to the Christmas Tree! 

This is my 4 year olds final product! 

 This is my 2 year olds final product!

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Christmas Traditions with Ornaments

I'm a sucker for family traditions and especially ones that occur around the holidays. There's just something about creating memories for my young family that I hope will not only continue throughout my children's childhood but maybe just maybe will be carried on to their children. At least that's the hope, the vision in my head while we participate in these simple customs. That is until my 4 year old drops a favorite ornament smashing it into tiny pieces all over the floor and decides tree decorating isn't for her and my 2 year old's adorable plastic Santa cup unbeknownst to me leaks and the hot coco spills all over the couch!! True stories, but I digress.

 I've posted about a few of our family Christmas Traditions here Advent Calendar and here Hot Chocolate Bar.

This past Sunday we put up our tree....

 

 and enjoyed our hot chocolate bar...

I wanted to share another simple Christmas family tradition we have while decorating the tree. Each child has their personalized first Christmas ornament from the year they were born. Every year these are the first ornaments put on the tree, each child puts on their ornament. Just a fun way to get the ornament decorating started!

 

Do you have ornament traditions in your family? I'd love to hear about them!

Have you done the hot chocolate bar? I'd love to see photos!

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Advent Calendar for Preschoolers

A recent trip to the dollar store inspired me to start collecting items for our Advent calendar so I'm not rushing around like a crazy woman on November 29th! I picked up some simple and cute treats including Christmas coloring books, cute ornaments, Christmas chocolates, and Christmas silly straws!
All in preparation for our Advent Calendar starting December 1st! I dusted off the one from last year purchased at Target. It's nothing fancy but I've seen some really adorable and cute ones on Pinterest if you're up for being creative.

I compiled our list of activities/treats for the month of December. This year I included some ideas from last year that I found on Pinterest (Yes, I love Pinterest!) as well as coming up with some of my own.
I tried to fill the calendar with a combination of activities, outings, getting fun treats/little gifts, and giving back. To make it easier on myself the "outings" listed are ones we would do anyway. I simply wrote the outing down on the date we were going to do them.  So Dec. 1st is go on the Polar Express (an outing we signed up for through our Park District), and Dec. 2nd is go on a horse drawn sleigh ride which we will do at our neighborhood Christmas Party.

I thought I'd share our list for the month of December:

1- Go on the Polar Express
2- Go on a horse drawn sleigh ride
3- Read a new Christmas Story (I ordered the girls new cheap Christmas books through Scholastic book club from my 4 year olds preschool class)
4- See Santa at the mall
5- Buy toys/clothes for Wish Tree Gift
6- Write a letter to Santa
7- Pick  2 toys to donate to a shelter/hospital
8- New Christmas coloring book
9- Christmas chocolate treat
10- A new ornament to put on the tree
11- Go see the zoo lights (Lincoln Park Zoo)
12- Decorate foam trees (Art project found at Target)
13- New silly Christmas Straws
14- Make cookies for neighbors, firemen, community helpers
15- Family movie night (Christmas Movie)
16- Go see Rocketts Christmas Show
17- Go to library and find Christmas books
18- Make a Christmas Candy Cottage
19- Donate to Salvation Army
20- Birthday Party for Daddy (Hubby's birthday)
21- Read Christmas stories and drink hot coco in front of the tree
22- Go see Christmas Lights (Christmas light show)
23- Make cookies for Santa
24- Spread reindeer food and open 1 gift (every year they open 1 gift on Xmas Eve and it's matching PJ's to wear to bed that night)
25- Santa comes- Santa chocolate treat

I'm certain this will be altered through the years, some things we'll keep to stick with tradition and others will change to correspond with he ages of our kids.

What's in your Advent Calendar? Anything I missed that's a big hit for your family?

Simple Ornament With Your Own Festive Photos!

I wanted to share a super easy last minute ornament gift I made with Mallory with some scrapbook paper and using these photos I took of them by the tree.

 I used my paper cutter to cut out a little rectangle and mounted it to a big rectangle.  I then used photo tape to tape the picture to the middle.

I found some scrapbook Holiday stickers/gems and Mallory helped decorate the ornament with stickers.

I used a hole puncher and made a hole at the top and used ribbon to tie through. I also used glitter glue to write the year.

So easy and ready to wrap for my grandparents for Christmas!