Home made snow globes!

This is what you will need - 

• empty clean baby food jars
• glue
• glitter
• small figures to go inside
• Christmas stickers
• blue tac
• 

We decorated the jars with stars - you could use stickers too

Stick the figure on to the lid of the jar.

Then fill the jar with sparkles and water and pop the lid on.

When you turn it upside down it should look like this - 

Here are some photos of them as they were shaken up - 

Strawberry Santas!

For this you need - cream, strawberries and some chocolate drops to make the eyes.

We used squirty cream, I think it would work better with thicker whipped cream!  

You chop the top off the strawberry. Add some cream to be the beard and then pop the top back on.  The add the eyes and a bit of fluff on the hat.

Our problem was the cream kept flopping down - which is why I suggest thicker cream!  It was great fun though! And they were yummy!.

The kids had a great time making them...!

This one was feeling rather flat...

I

Sparkle cakes!

We started off by making some fairy cakes and used a recipe from the BBC site - http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/fairycakes_93711

• 110g/4oz butter or margarine, softened at room temperature
• 110g/4oz caster sugar
• 2 free-range eggs, lightly beaten
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 110g/4oz self-raising flour
• 1-2 tbsp milk

Once they were baked and cooled I set out the cakes along with icing, edible glitter, icing pens, sweets, cherries and chocolate sprinkes and let the children create their own cakes!

Here are some of the finished ones...many got eaten before I had the chance to take piccies!

Stripy camels and Kings from Usbourne Art book

We tried an idea from "the usborne book of christmas art ideas" which was bought for me.  A lot of the ideas are more suitable for older children and involve collages and complicated assembling crafts.  

We decided to do "Stripy camels and Kings" mainly because the original painting could be done by any age and then cut in to the correct shape. 

Our craft was roughly based on the book but was slightly adapted to the materials we had and the age range.  We had lots of fun with the paints making stripes!  The splodgy one was done by a 8 month old baby who also enjoyed chewing the brush and painting his face! 

When they were dry I drew camel and king shapes on the back and cut them out.

We then drew, coloured and cut out all the extra parts for the King - like face, hands and presents. 

Link to the book  - http://www.play.com/Books/Books/4-/10421997/853506441/Christmas-Art-Ideas/ListingDetails.html

Lakeland oven rack soaking tray...great for doing messy crafts in!

I am quite sure I can honestly say that I will never clean my oven racks in this!  It has so many other uses though.  I bought it mainly as a sand tray as the size and colour were perfect as the blue ca be the sea/sky. 

Have also used it for our snow dough - 

It is the perfect size to play in and it is only £10.99!  I am sure other places do similar and do feel free to let me know if you have heard of another good one but this one is very strong and seems able to cope with this use too!  Here is a wee link - http://www.lakeland.co.uk/20228/Oven-Rack-Soaking-Tray

Snow!

This was an idea from the wonderful "The Imagination Tree" - Anna calls it snow dough.  While play dough/shaving foam etc are good for pretend snow this is the closest thing I have every felt to snow that is not the real thing!   That crunch snow has when you squash it in your hand - this has it!

The recipe is 1/4 cup oil to 2 cups corn flour.  And some glitter! We mixed the ingredients together in a bowl.  We used baby oil which made it silky soft and smell delicious, you can use cooking oil too.

I used my fantastic lakeland tray - it is amazing, will find a link and post it up!   This kept all the snow contained and a mat under.  The floor got slippy when even a tiny but of the pily snow got dropped so the mat was a MUST!


Now I have to confess I brought a tube of animals with me - I had planned on it being my farm animals and I thought a snowy farm might be fun - see how the animals coped with the cold...I accidently brought my jungle animals!

Here you can see some jungle animals...hiding in the snow! 

The snow was a big hit, great fun for scooping, writing letters in, hiding things under and moulding.

Here is a snow ball we made - 

AND that afternoon if snowed for real in Glasgow - perhaps it was magic snow dough!  Thanks to Anna at The Imagination Tree for the idea :) http://theimaginationtree.com/2012/11/snow-dough-recipe-for-winter-sensory.html

Glittery Christmas biscuits

We used a basic short bread recipe for this - 6oz plain flour

4oz butter and 2 oz sugar.   Mixed together, rolled out and cut out star and Christmas tree shapes.

We baked them in the oven for 20min at gas mark 5 - or until they look right.

When cooled we iced them - using icing coloured with green food colouring for the tree.  Just used white for the stars but you could of course use yellow food colouring.  

Then decorated them with edible glitter and sprinkles!

Messy play helps toddlers!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2516618/How-messy-helps-toddlers-learn-Children-grab-feel-taste-objects-constantly-gathering-information.html

Mini Santa!

Today we made mini santas! You will need -

• toilet roll/kitchen roll tubes
• cardboard
• red paint (alternatively use red paper to wrap round the tube)
• cotton wool
• googly eyes
• glue
• black paper
• scissors 

First we painted toilet roll tubes and some plain cardboard red, then left them to dry for a few hours.
Later we cut arms and hates out of the cardboard and stuck them on with glue.

We used black paper to cut out boots.

White paper for faces, with googly eyes.

Finally cotton wool was used for the beard and fur trim.  Here are our jolly santas....

Cotton wool snowmen

Don't need much explanation for this one! 

I drew the outline of the snowmen and we filled the head and body with cotton wool using PVA glue.

Pens, pompoms and coloured paper were used for the hat and scarf and buttons

The arms were coloured match sticks and we used snowflake sequins to decorate the area around the snowmen 

Paper plate snowmen with older children

Today I was with some older children and we decided to so a more complex version of the paper plate snowmen I did last week.

We used  - 

• paper plates
• scissors
• different colours of glitter
• PVA glue
• glue stick
• cellotape
• sequins
• lollypop sticks
• coloured paper
• pens
• googly eyes

We cut one of the paper plates in to a smaller circle and attached it to the body.  Then decorated the snowmen with a range of the materials available. 

Here are their finished snow men - 

Sparkly fairy dust

We used the fairy dust that we made a few months ago and kept in a tub, the ingredients for the original fairy dust was - salt, paint and hundreds and thousands. 

This time we added a tube of glitter! 

We used jars and different shaped/sized spoons to play with the fairy dust - 

And made patterns in it too - 

Original blog on fairy dust - http://giraffescancraft.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/fairy-dust-idea-from-imagination-tree.html

Paper plate snow men (Toddler group craft)

This week at toddlers we decided to make some snowmen since it has been so cold and frosty outside. 

I used paper plates for the body and paper plates with the rims cut off for the heads. 

I also cut out hat, scarf, nose, eyes, button and arm shapes from coloured paper.

The children used glue to stick these on.

The end result looked something like this.  Although of course we also had many snowmen with numerous noses and scarfs on their heads! 

Rudolph biscuits

To make these gingerbread reindeer we used the Be-ro recipe which is - http://www.be-ro.co.uk/recipe/showrec22.html

• 300 g (10 oz) Be-Ro Self Raising Flour
• pinch salt
• 3 x 5 ml spoon (3 tsp) ground ginger
• 100 g (4 oz) caster sugar
• 50 g (2 oz) margarine
• 3 x 15 ml spoon (3 tbsp) golden syrup
• 4 x 15 ml spoon (4 tbsp) milk

To make the shape of the reindeer head you use...a gingerbread man cutter!  If you turn this upside down then it makes the shape of a reindeer!  Very clever! 

After the biscuits had cooked at 160 for 15min and allowed to cool we decorated them.  We used writing icing.  However you could use normal icing with food colouring, or even a glace cherry for the nose!