Holiday Crafting

 

 

Just a few things my kids did this week for the holiday season.  This week, we focused specifically on Hanukkah, and although the crafting options are limited with my 18-24 months, I think we did a pretty good job.  First, we created these Star of Davids using tissue paper and fancy foil paper I found and Artists and Crafstman Supply.  I gave each child a bunch of blue tissue paper squares to work with and allowed them to arrange the squares however they wanted on the page.  I cut the stars out ahead of time, and once the tissue paper part was complete, I framed the work with the pre-cut star shape.  They turned out beautifully, and I'm including a latke recipe for the parents inside the card...

                                                                                                               


 ...This is definitely not an original idea, but still a wonderful project.  I'm pretty sure you can do anything with paper plates or toilet paper rolls, seriously.  This is pretty straight-forward:  I halved 2 sizes of paper plates and glued the pieces together, then I let my kids decorate their menorah  with metallic paint stampers and tissue paper.  After they were finished, we used Popsicle sticks and glitter to create candles.  I didn't think about this at the time, but you could make the Sham ash (the candle used to light the other candles) a different color.

 Also, this is the starting point for our winter wall mural.  On the first day, it was just the snowman, all by his lonesome, but my kids made some very lovely evergreens to keep him company...

...As you can tell, I'm on a serious tissue paper kick.  I cut out trees for the kids to decorate, and all gave them some shiny star stickers to work with.  Some of my younger kids needed a little assistance as their fine motor skills are not quite developed, but they worked very hard and did a great job...

 ...I think my favorite little detail from the mural are the twinkle lights.  I traced a whole bunch of light bulb templates on one side of large pieces of tag board, and let my kids finger paint on the other side.  I stuck to primarily holiday colors, a lot of red, green, and yellow, although I tried to keep green and red separate so that I wouldn't end up with brown.  I did the same thing in order to create fall leaves earlier this year.


That's all for now.  More to come...

Speaking of Variations...

Since I'm on this no-mess, throw-it-in-a-sealed-container-with-paint-and-shake-it kick, I thought I'd try it out with these pine cones...

We all love glitter...sure we do, but it does have a tendency to get everywhere and never ever go away.  So I figured I would try to keep the glitter factor a bit more contained.

 I just rolled the pine cones in a good coating of glue...

...and tossed some glitter in a large yogurt container and let my kids do the rest.  This was a great solution to glitter woes, and the finished product was gorgeous.  

Prints and Pollocks

 It's seriously been a while since I've updated, even though I have a ton of pictures waiting to be posted and lots of projects to talk about.  These two projects were really fun and complimented each other well, so I thought I'd throw them into one post...

 

My toddler classes worked on these mini Pollock paintings (R) using the tried and true marble painting technique.  We used a variety of objects, including beads and seashells, and got a ton of different effects.  The kids loved the concept of making lots of noise while creating artwork.  Preschool and Pre-K worked on these fabulous aluminum foil prints (L), and they absolutely adored this project.  A lot of the kids wanted to do multiple prints, so I let them try all kinds of color combinations and paint thicknesses.  The example above is one of my favorites...

...Here's a few more examples of these projects...

 ...I also used the same marble painting technique to make these paper chain strips.  I threw a little glitter in the mix as well.  I love that they look like sparkly bacon strips..









The work looked wonderful when it was displayed together on the art wall, and I was really excited to try all kinds of variations.  Give these projects a try!