Quilt Patchwork Patterns

Spice up your Chrsitmas Holiday with some Kids Ornament Crafts

Christmas is a holiday where all kinds of kids crafts are created at home and in the school environment.

Crafts for kids, however should be an activity that should bring fun and excitement to children’s activities aside from adding a bonding to the adults that are doing the projects with them.

Educational arts and crafts is a way of doing crafts with children where they are not blindly copying the adults model but are creating things that they are capable of creating at their own developmental level.

When children create at their own level a number of things occur.

It creates a great feeling about themselves, as who can feel good about crafts projects that are copycat models of someone else’s. Children who create their own projects without adult input feel much better about themselves.

An even more beneficial side to educational arts and crafts is its inherent allowance for creativity.
There is very little that represses creativity more than having to copy anothers work.

There are a few categories that are part of educational art.
There is the cafeteria style that allows children to choose materials to work with, there is process only art where the process is what counts along with a few more.

The point of it is that all of the crafts under educational arts and crafts should be age appropriate, and allow for freedom of creation and expression.

Below I will give you 2 clear cut, almost effortless Christmas craft ornaments that you can make.

The first one uses plastic throwaway cups:

The kids can use permament markers to make many colorful designs on their cups. Try egging them on to fill in as much empty space on the cup as possible.

When they are done, take a cookie sheet and put the cups upside down on it and put in the over at around 350 degrees. Give them a few minutes so that they have time to melt. Look out for the amount of time the cups are in the oven as they can burn up completely. Don’t allow the children near this part as it gets very hot.

When they are cool, make a hole in the center and use colorful ribbon to hang as an ornament for your tree.

Another project is to take all of your old cd’s and dvd’s and use them for the project.

Basically: Decorate them and hang them.

There are tons of ways of enhancing the cd’s.

You can color with permanent markers, glue and glitter them, collage over them, decoupage over them, and decorate them with whatever shiny, decorative materials you can find.
Once they are done, get some pretty ribbon and hang them from your tree.

If you want to see what a crafts acitivity done in the cafeteria style is like then check out this Hanukkah Crafts collage

Fun Kid’s Activity - Make a Scrapbook with Them

Have you gotten your kids involved in scrapbooking? I keep seeing websites for crop moms, scrappin’ moms and so many moms who love scrapbooking. I wonder if all those croppin’ moms ever tried scrapbooking with their children? Finding crafts and activities for children can be difficult when you have to compete with video games, iPods and television! Kids usually act like they don’t want to do an activity - but once you get started, they usually end up loving the creativity - and scrapbooking is fun.

If you’ve never tried scrapbooking with your kids, here are some tips.

Make sure you have enough of the basic scrapbook supplies for everyone - glue, paper, scissors, and albums. There are lots of themed scrapbook albums for kids. You could find an album for each child (there are sports scrapbook albums, Disney scrapbook albums, and scrapbook kits for kids have similar themes to use for ideas. If you want to make one large family album, have everyone share ideas as a group and give each child their own page to personalize. There are many small albums called mini-scrapbooks that can be fun for a quick scrapbooking activity time.

Some parents prefer to make specific supplies available for a kid’s scrapbook activity. Set aside any materials you don’t want the kids to use (such as those you are saving for your own projects). Other parents just let them use any of the supplies they have available. It’s something you should plan ahead of time - which of your supplies do you want to use in this scrapbooking activity.

Children’s Scrapbooking Activity Time Tips:

Tip 1: Have Fun

This is supposed to be about having fun. Things don’t have to look perfect in these scrapbook albums - allow the kids to be creative. Have the kids come up with ideas so they can develop their creative abilities.

Tip 2: Scrapbooking Tools and Materials

Supervise the use of any sharp tools or remove the ones that are dangerous from the available supplies. When using punches or other tools they are unfamiliar with, explain how to use them and show them the right way to avoid any accidents.

Tip 3: Get Organized before You Start

Prepare for the activity by sorting out your art, craft and scrapbook supplies. Have your supplies in organizers or containers to keep the pens, stickers, glue, photo corners and other embellishments easy to get to.

Tip 4: Photos for the Scrapbook

Select photos and have them on hand for the scrapbook. Put photographs you plan to use for your own projects in a safe place, or print extras for the kids to use.

Tip 5: Stickers, Rub-ons and Embellishments

Show the kids what types of supplies you typically use in a scrapbook. Scrapbook kits could be purchased in advance to help with more ideas and supplies for scrapbooks with themes, such as pets, hobbies, boy’s or girls scrapbook themes.

Tip 6: Writing and Journaling 

Explain how journaling - writing their own notes and captions - can add interest to their scrapbooks. Having some colorful pens to use can make this even more fun. If your child likes drawing, they can make some sketchs or drawings for the pages. Don’t forget to let them add personal information, such as their name, age and the date on their pages. When they look at the scrapbook in later years, knowing what they did at different ages will become of more interest to them.

Tip 7: Set Some Activity Time Rules

Keep drinks and food away from your activity area. Spilled liquids or food on your supplies would be expensive accidents that you want to avoid.

If you have teenagers who love computers, think about having them learn about digital scrapbooking - they may like computer scrapbooking as much or more than playing those video games!

Hopefully your kids will enjoy this kind of quality time spent with you, and they will learn the joy that comes from creativity. You never know - your kids may decide scrapbooking is their favorite hobby!