We had fun making our parent gifts this week. Here was one we did last year. But since I had the same class this year (moved up to 2nd grade) I couldn’t do that again. But Here is last year’s post.
We made white acrylic handprints on blue glass ball ornaments. The white handprints turn out to look like 5 little fat snowmen for the kids to then decorate with “painty” markers. Here is a sample that we just did today. Here are the steps….
1. Start with blue glass ornaments (any shade) and have your child paint his own hand white with acrylic paint
(I usually go over it once with a paintbrush. Then set the ornament in their hand and they press lightly.
2. Fill in the missing parts of the hand with a small paintbrush. Let dry 15 minutes or so. Wash hands.
3. Adults use a BLACK paint marker and put 2 dot eyes and 4-5 dots for smile on each snowman. and put 2 “twig” arms on either side using BROWN, and a triange shaped carrot nose in ORANGE.
4. Give students markers to make button dots down the front of snowman, a scarf around his neck kind of flying out in the wind, and some kind of hat. Kids can choose black tophat or red, green, blue or yellow Santa hat using a triangle shape with a white ball on the tip top.
5. Adult write child’s name in white painty marker and year somewhere at top of scene when it is dry.
6. Add a blue or silver ribbon and this poem on cute blue paper with a hole punched in a corner. Wrap it up with tissue paper and ribbons or do what I do and use brown paper bags with a handmade reindeer on top.
The kids love to do this craft and it always turns out so cute. Parents have come back and told me it was the cutest ornament they’ve ever had.
The kids in my class then get a lesson in “giftwrapping” and we use school tissue paper and yarn and wrap these darling ornaments up for mom, topped of course by a wonderful handmade card.
Last year I had the kids do a handprint card which turns out to look like Santa Claus. I paint their palm in peach paint and red and the fingers in white. Then when it dries I have them use their pointer finger and make white dots on the peach for the mustache and pom pom dots on the red hat and along the bottom of the hat too. Then we use glitter glue for eyes and nose (I do this after school and add a few glitter stars around the card) and we attach the “All We Want for Christmas” to the front.
Then I give kids different types of cute stationery to write on and we go through the whole writing process doing a brainstorm of ideas on the board, “sloppy copy” on newsprint, and then I edit for spelling and we rewrite on the nice colored paper. Here’s what they look like all done. Very fun writing activity with a little art sprinkled in! Hope mom’s love this!
