Holiday Craft Day With our Homeschool Group

We took a day off from traditional school today because we had a fun homeschool group meet up this afternoon making holiday crafts.

We brought our Angel Paperclip ornament supplies and some Paint Chip Snowmen Ornament materials with us to share.

Each family brings enough supplies for 12-15 kids to make a Christmas craft and the kids have so much fun trying out all sorts of wonderful new crafts.  One of the moms brings wrapping paper and tape too so the kids can wrap their crafts as gifts for friends and family members.

 Today the boys got to make stained glass votive holders (made out of baby food jars, tissue paper and watered down glue-- just glue colored pieces of paper to the outside of the jar and put a tea light candle inside!). 

They made beaded candy canes (using white chenille stems and tri- tipped red, green and white beads).

Evan's pattern--- red, white, green, green

They each made another angel and snowman ornament (for the snowmen I found white, gray, and light blue paint swatches at the home improvement store, we glued googlie eyes and black paper hats onto the paint chips, added some marker buttons, an orange marker nose and tied a ribbon scarf around his neck-- easy and cheap too!).

aren't they adorable?

They made hanging hearts out of candy canes (tape two candy canes together at the top and bottom where they meet, cover tape with decorative duct tape, hang using chenille stems and finish with an optional bow).

They made thumb print reindeer ornaments (they stuck their thumb in a bit of brown paint, made a thumb print, drew antlers and eyes with sharpie markers, and dotted a red nose onto the reindeer using the back side of a paintbrush dipped in red paint).

One mom purchased a bunch of those foam kits from Michaels and the kids made ornaments-- my boys chose to make a few of the snowman ornaments.  These were such cute crafts and so easy too since everything was a sticker! 

 Alec made a paper wreath but I didn't get a chance to get a picture of it before he decided to wrap it.  He was a lean, mean Christmas gift making machine!
 
 We had yummy snacks-- like our snowman cheese sticks, a fruit tree (that two of the kids made!), some yummy chocolate chip banana bread, and clementines.  It's great for all the kids to get together every few weeks and play but it's always nice to have these more organized days too.  Many of the kids were making gifts, wrapping them and then giving them to one another since they've become such good friends. 

We made these cute, healthy snowmen yesterday as part of our
snowman day!