More Christmas Ideas

Here are a few more fun Christmas activities to enjoy with your kids. We didn't get to these at day camp but they are still just as fun.
Gingerbread Door Hanger:
Materials:

• Safety Scissors
• Brown Construction paper
• gingerbread stencils (optional)
• Pencils
• Washable Crayola Markers
• Red, Green, Brown, or White yarn or string
• A single hole puncher

Instructions:

1. Either draw or trace a few gingerbread people onto brown construction paper.
2. Cut out the gingerbread people
3. Hole punch to top of each gingerbread person
4. Use markers to decorate the people with faces and other accessories 
5. Weave the string or yarn in and out of the hole punches, connecting the people
6. Tie off the string at the ends
7. Hang it over a doorway or window

Christmas Guess Who:

Materials: 

• Index cards of strips of paper
• Tape
• something to write with

Instructions:

1. Come up with Christmas themed names and/or objects. Santa Clause, ornament, Rudolph, snow, north pole, etc.
2. Write each idea on a separate index card or strip of paper.
3. Without showing the players the cards, tape a card to each player's back with the side with the writing facing out.
4. Each player has to figure out what name or object is on their back by asking the other players, who know what the card says, yes or no questions about it... Is it a person? Is it a boy? Is it a girl? Does it live at the north pole? etc.
5. The first person to guess their's right wins. 

For extra Christmas spirit play Christmas music in the background while enjoying these activities and the other activities described in my previous post about Christmas Day Camp! 

Have A Very Merry Christmas Everyone!

Christmas Day Camp

The other day I did a Christmas day camp for the kids. We played games and did a lot of crafts. The first craft we did was given to me by Keegan, Delaney, and Cam's mom, Ashley. Thank you Ashley for your help.
Gnome Santas:
Materials:

• small, cylinder pieces of wood from a tree, branch, log, etc.
• Red, Black, White, and Green Crayola Cloud Clay.
• small googly eyes
• Tooth picks

Instructions:

1. Take the small, cylinder pieces of wood and shave of the top so that the top slants upward.
2. Choose either red or green Crayola Cloud Clay for your Santa.
3. Take off a chunk of clay and place the wood in the center closer to the bottom
4. Start the wrapping process by covering the bottom of the wood (the NOT slanted side) by folding the up the clay on the bottom onto the wood
5. Then work your way up wrapping the clay on both sides (do not fold over on the face, which is the slanted part)
6. When you get to the top fold the excess clay on the top over.
7. Take a strip of white and roll it.
8. wrap it around the face on the edge of the other clay.
9. Take some more white.
10. Mold it into a beard type shape lay it down about 1/4 way up the face.
11. Take a tooth pick and make small incisions on the beard to make it look like hair.
12. Then, with the tooth pick, cut out a mouth shape in the beard almost to the top of the beard. (this creates a mouth and a mustache)
13. Take a tiny red ball of red Crayola Cloud Clay and stick it at the top of the mustache, for a nose.
14. Either stick two small googly eyes on the face for eyes of take 2 small flat pieces of white clay and two even smaller pieces of black clay and make eyes.
15. Let them air dry

Paper Bag Reindeer Puppet:
Materials:

• Brown paper lunch sacks
•  small colored cotton balls
• Big googly eyes
• red and black washable markers
• Brown Construction Paper

Instructions:

1. Take the child's hands and trace them onto the brown construction paper
2. Cut them out
3. Have the open side of the lunch sack facing down (flap on the top)
4. Glue the handprints onto the side of the bag without the flap with the thumbs facing out in opposite directions. (these are the antlers)
5. The flap is the face so glue the googly eyes on the top of the flap and the cotton ball in the middle of the flap. 
6. If you want a moth either use a red or black marker and draw a mouth underneath the flap.
7. Now you have a puppet, stick your hand into the bag and make the flap move up and down.
8. Name it after your favorite reindeer, Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, Blitzen, or Rudolph. 

Bruce The Spruce (the talking Christmas tree at the Warm Beach Lights of Christmas)
Materials:

• green, red, and yellow construction paper
• colored markers or small colored cotton balls.
• Safety scissors
• Pencils
• Big googly eyes

Instructions:

1. draw and cut out a fairly big Christmas tree on green construction paper.
2. Cut out a smile mouth shape on red construction paper and glue it closer to the bottom
3. Glue the googly eyes closer to the top. 
4. Draw on ornaments with Crayola Washable Markers or glue on small colored cotton balls
5. Cut out a star on yellow construction paper and glue it on the top of the tree.
6. Merry Christmas Bruce!

The last thing we did was play a game called Santa Says. It's just like Simon Says but except for saying Simon Says... you say Santa Says... and you wear a Santa hat if you have one. I got this idea from http://holidays.kaboose.com/xmas-party.html
Happy Holidays!

Thanksgiving

Gobble! Gobble! Gobble! It's time for some Thanksgiving fun. Here are some fun craft ideas....

The Classic Turkey Hand (I know you all have done this one at one point but let me remind you anyway)

1. Trace your hand onto a piece 
2. Color it in so that your thumb is the head and your pinkie, index, pointer, and middle finger are the feathers the rest of the hand should be brown.
3. Don't forget to add the red stuff on the chin of you're turkey (Not sure what it's called). 
4. Color a fall background. Sun, clouds, falling leaves, grass, football, etc.

Leaf strings:

1. draw, cut, and trace leaves onto colored construction paper, red, orange,yellow
2. Punch one hole into the top of each leaf 
3. Cut some string and thread it through all the leaves, tie at both ends
4. Hang it in a doorway or over a large window

Customized Football: 

1. What would you're dream football look like? Pink with sparkles, neon rainbow, feathered, polka dotted, plaid, striped, or just regular. 
2. Draw a football on a piece of paper 
3. use all sorts of craft supplies, such as cotton balls, sparkles, feathers, Crayola Washable Markers, Crayola Crayons, Crayola colored pencils, etc. to customize your football. 

Enjoy!

Costumes

Time to hurry up and find a cool costume for Halloween. Be scary, be silly, be crazy! In my lifetime I'v been a clown, a lion, an Incredible, a doctor, an ocean (best costume in my kindergarten class!), an eighties person, Hermione Granger (Harry Potter), a hippie, a black cat, a duck. This year I'm being a Native American (kinda like Disney's Pocahontas). Abby is being a hippie, Sam is being a Husky Fan, Jordan is being a witch, Delaney is being a genie, Cam is an army man, Keegs doesn't know. 

Pumpkins

The classic Halloween time activity is go to the pumpkin patch with your family, get pumpkins, and then carve them right? Well, last October we did something a little different we went to the pumpkin patch and got our "perfect" pumpkins, but instead of getting out the old carving knife we got out the paint brushes and the (washable) Crayola paint and painted our pumpkins. How crazy are we right? So I guess the point of this is to give you something different to try. This year we're going back to carving but who knows maybe we'll try painting again next year.
Ideas for pumpkin faces: cyclops, buck teeth, one tooth, princess (with crown), smile face, scowl (frown), or the classical triangular eyes and nose with a mouth with a bunch of teeth missing.
Enjoy!

Halloween Decorationg

Use your classic Halloween decorations and make them even more spooky. Here's a fun craft that you can do with your kids and uses your decorations.

What we did:

1. Set up an R.I.P tombstone, a potion pot, and a skull on a table. (don't uses a table that you would typically eat on.
2. Cut green and white construction paper into long strips.
3. Folded them back and forth to make them wavy. (fold a small section of the strip over one way and then the other way. Continue until there isn't anymore space to fold.)
4. Put the green paper (potion) into the potion pot (fill it up)
5. Spread the white (fog) around the whole "scene" on the table
6. Now you have a graveyard

Ideas of decorations you could use skull, potion pot, skeleton, tombstone, witch, mummy, zombie, pumpkin, etc.