Christmas crafting with kids

We got our first snow here in West Tennessee early this week. My kids were so excited. This is really the first time that they've experienced a real snow fall. When we lived in Texas it snowed about 1/4 of an inch in February of this year and it only stuck to the driveway (so that's where they made their snow angels). So, they were super excited. They played outside in the snow...got cold...came in and had hot chocolate. We've also been doing some more crafting and Christmas crafting in particular. My kids love to do "projects", and ask to do them all the time. I figured it was time I start actually doing some of the things that I pin on my pinterest board...so we got out the construction paper and got to work!

The first thing we made was a Christmas Tree ring Advent calendar from Make and Takes. Naomi was able to do this pretty well on her own, I just had to tell her where to put the next ring, however I had to help Micah with it quite a bit.

 Then I decided to cut out their handprints and make a wreath. My mom used to make a big Christmas tree with her second grade classes handprints. I'm sure this wreath has been done before and is nothing new but it was fun to make and it'll be fun to see how their handprints grow over the years. So, I just traced their hands on one piece of paper and then cut six out at a time. Then you just curl the fingers in a bit and then I glued them to a cardboard cereal box circle.

Glue them around the circle and keep layering them until the wreath looks full. Then I just glued some red circles around and covered the middle with a big red circle and as you can see wrote "merry christmas" on the circle to cover up the ends of the hands. I think I used about 24 handprints (half from a 5 year old and half from a 3 year old).

I tried to trace Hannah's hand so that I could make a small Christmas tree but she threw a fit. I'll try again some other time. But, you can use the handprints to create a Christmas tree as well. Just start the hands with the curled fingers pointing down but the hands curling upwards and layer the handprints in the shape of a tree. I'll try and get a photo of one soon!

Happy Christmas crafting!

I'll be celebrating my 32nd birthday tomorrow...and I'm hoping to do 32 random acts of kindness within the next week. I'll let you know how it goes!