Holiday Crafts

I've done a lot more crafts with my son recently.  I was inspired at the library during story time just before Thanksgiving, when the presenter had a giant felt board.  It contained the body of a turkey, and she gave each child a feather to decorate it with.  My son surprised me that day.  Up until that point, he'd been pretty timid during story time (we were pretty new to it) but he went straight up to get a feather and put it on the turkey immediately, before the activity officially started.  Seeing that, I decided that crafts where I prefabricate the pieces and he gets to put them together would be great activities for us, to give us something to do during the day (especially on cold days.)

This is him with his Christmas wall

This tree was based on the pin-the-feather-on-the-turkey project.  I cut everything out, and he decorated the tree.  I even let him operate the glue stick by the end of the month.

I wasn't sure how he would do with making dough ornaments, but he can operate cookie cutters with play-dough, so I thought we'd give it a try.  Apart from trying to keep him from destroying them as I transferred them to a cookie sheet, he did quite well.

Next, I decided to try gluing cotton balls onto Santa's beard.  He surprised me again.  I explained that we were filling in the beard and demonstrated one cotton ball, and he went to town after that.  I'd expected him to put the cotton balls all over the picture, but he kept them mostly within the outlined perimeter.

Due to the success of the dough ornaments, I decided we'd make some cookies as well.  He only lasted for one tray's worth, but we still had fun.

Here, he's decorating the hardened dough ornaments.  He gave them as gifts to family.

Decorating the cookies.  Hubby's idea, but it worked.  As you can probably guess from the frosting on his face, I set the cookies he decorated aside for him to eat.

A handprint wreath.  I learned, over the course of the month, that he does not have the patience to sit and wait while I cut things out, so I had to plan this one the night before.

For reasons beyond the scope of this blog, I had a hard time deciding how to introduce the Christmas story to my son.  I know there ought to be plenty of good kids' books out there on the subject, but they must have all been checked out of the library because the only ones I found were way above his head.  Eventually I found a good, child-friendly telling of the story online, and I rearranged the clip art from an online diorama to suit my tastes.  We made a four-day project of it, each time reading the story, coloring the new characters, and then gluing them to the stable.  I was happy with the result, and the more characters we added, the more engaged he got in the story.

All right, there's my "see how talented my kid is" post for the month.  I'm trying to decide what crafts to do next with him.  Holidays make for such easy themes.  Anyway, thanks for reading!