Two Craft Projects for a Cheap 'n' Cheerful Christmas!

Can you believe that as of today it's only one month til Christmas?  My kidlets only have five more full days of school left for the year, so we are spending this week working on a heap of cheap 'n' cheerful holiday themed learning, mixed in with a little art and craft.  It's always great to do some special end of year activities, but it can be really expensive to buy a lot of bits and bobs to prepare them all.  This week, I'm going to share with you some easy ideas that won't break the bank. I had good intentions of posting about the super fun Maths and Literacy activities we did today... but... well... it's Monday night and I'm tired.  So instead, here's two craft projects that my kidlets worked on last Friday and today.

First up, the easiest wreath you will ever make:

All you need is a paper plate with the middle cut out per child.  I bought a pack of 100 plates for a couple of dollars at a discount store.  Then, have your kidlets cut green crepe paper into small squares to collage onto it.  Add some red squares for berries (you could easily punch out some red paper circles - but I like the abstract look because I am lazy), and a paper bow.  Easy peasy!  And they look really great on display in the classroom - although my kidlets are begging me to take them home for their front doors. :)

The next idea is a little bit trickier but so effective.  You'll need a few things ready:

Grab some felt sheets to cut a carrot nose and scarf for each child.  You'll also need black top hats - I guess you could use felt for this as well, but I forgot about the hats until this morning so I used card.  The felt sheets were 90c each, and I only needed 1 orange sheet, and 2 green sheets.  The card was scraps from another project, but I used less than 1/4 of a piece.  The buttons were in a craft pack - I think they were about $5 but the bag is HUGE! There's literally hundreds left.  I'm sure you could buy a smaller pack for much less money, or you might have a stash of buttons in your storeroom. :)  You'll need 3 buttons per child.  They don't all need to be the same colour - in fact it would probably be cuter with a variety of colours.  Stick 'em all onto a jumbo craft stick ($2 for a pack of 25) and you get these cuties:

(Ours still need a little piece of ribbon glued on so you can hang them on a tree.)

*The pin that gave me the inspiration for this led to a site that was blocked for spam... so I'm not sure who originally had this idea.*

I did this step by step, but my Preppies made these by themselves.  Older kids could cut their pieces out themselves, too - it's really very easy.

Hopefully one (or both!) of these ideas might be something that you can use with your kidlets this year. I'll be back tomorrow (or later in the week... or on Saturday!) with some maths and literacy ideas that will fit with the Christmas theme. 

Until then, let's all have a wonderful week! :)

Lauren