1-2-3 Come Make a Christmas Ornament With Me

If you’re looking for a quick, easy & super-fun little craft for your students to make, I think you’ll enjoy these cool cat ornaments to help wish someone a “Purr-fect” Christmas.

My Young Fives love anything with animals, especially a cool blue cat, so I thought making a Christmas ornament would be entertaining.

You’ll love the versatility of this activity as there are 5 options, which fit a variety of ages, grade levels & abilities.

With 20 cat-themed balls to choose from, there is plenty of variety too.

As always, patterns come in black & white for students, as well as full color, so that teachers can quickly & easily make an example to share.

Making a sample, not only helps you explain what you want your students to do, it acts as a catalyst for excitement.

 If your students are like mine, be prepared for many of them to ask, "Can we please make another one." Woo Hoo!

Besides the pictures, I’ve also included two “greeting” ball options, plus a blank version, so that students can draw their own picture, glue on a school photo, or write their own greeting.

The options?

1. Keep things super-simple & have students color & cut out a single cat ball, then flip it over and add a greeting to make 1 flat ornament.

I always like to tuck a little something in my students’ back packs as a surprise.

“Paper love” is an inexpensive but truly thoughtful gift, and this simple flat ornament is really easy to make a class set of. 

I made 20 in just half an hour. You could also add their school photo & then laminate. 

Pick one of the designs for their ornament from you, then run off the other cat pictures for them to make one of their own. 

Punch a hole in the top, and tie with a yarn loop. Voila! You're done.

2. Another option is to make the ornament a “flip up”.

Here you choose a cat ball to color & cut out, then add a dab of glue to the top of a "greeting" ball, then press the cat ball on top. 

You could also include a blank ball as well, or instead of the greeting.

3. The third option is an “Ornament Dangler” involves 3 ornaments glued together vertically, with a greeting centered on the back.

Grab that teachable moment for vocabulary building, as some children will not be familiar with the terms vertical & horizontal.

Completed projects look amazing swirling & twirling from the ceiling.

Plus the dangler, still neatly folds up for safe travels home in a back pack.

4.  My personal favorite option is the  three-part, 3D ornament.

Although a 3 dimensional ornament looks a bit tricky, I think you'll find that after you make a sample of your own, you'll see that they are really quite simple to put together.

I twirled the ornament around, so that you can see all 3 cat pictures, which make one-3D ornament.

Whenever I want to do something a bit more complicated with my Y5s, I enlist the help of our 3rd grade reading buddies.

My littles get the one-on-one help that they need, plus it's a great experience & self-esteem builder for the older students.

If you do this, make sure you have ornaments for the older kiddos to make one right along with their younger partner, for they will be just as excited to make a cool cat ornament of their own.  

5. Finally, a four-part 3D ornament, is assembled just like a three-part one, so it's pretty easy too. 

A 4-part ornament involves just one more step; gluing the 4th ball to the ornament. Here I added a "greeting" ball to 3 cat pictures. 

I had an absolute blast designing this craftivity & making my samples.  I hope you enjoy making some ornaments too.

Today's featured FREEBIE is a sweet "Rip & Tear" snowman craft.

Ripping and tearing strips of paper is not only fun for your kiddos, it's a terrific way to help strengthen their finger muscles. 

Completed projects turn or amazing and make a "snow" special bulletin board or hallway display.

Well that's it for today. Thanks for popping in.

Gotta run and get ready to watch this evening's Christmas parade. Several of our grandchildren will be in it!

Wishing you and yours a “purr-fect” holiday season, brimming with a ton of fun. 

"Try to learn something about everything and everything about something." -Thomas H. Huxley

1-2-3 Come Make Some Christmas Ornaments With Me

Here’s a quick, easy & fun Christmas name ornament, that’s a perfect little craftivity for party day or those crazy last few days of school.

Even the Common Core “Grinch” police, will have no problem finding this an extremely educational activity!

It can simply be done with little ones (PK-Y5) to practice their names, along with letter recognition, and the difference between upper and lowercase letters, vowels & consonants as well as counting.

Older kiddos, (K-3rd) can practice a lot of math:
such as graphing, addition, greater & less than, data analysis, inference, guess-timation, plus comparing & contrasting with a Venn diagram.

I’ve included several worksheets and graphing extensions, plus a "secret" coded Christmas message that you can challenge your students to solve.

Make it a "speed" game, and see who can decode the message first.
Afterwards, students pick a partner and write a secret message to them.

For a sweet keepsake, have children write their name on the back, along with a date and grade, then glue their school photo on. 

Click on the link to zip on over to my TpT shop to take a look: Christmas Name Ornament Laced With Math.

Laminate your students’ completed projects; punch a hole at the top & add a yarn loop.

Today's feartured FREEBIE is also an ornament. It's a fingerprint Christmas tree, sure to become a keepsake as well.  

This little craftivity, is a terrific way to review the concept of +1 more and counting to 10, and includes a poem for the back:

"My fingerprints as you can see, have made a lovely little tree. They're stacked up straight and oh so tall, with love from me when I was small."  Children sign and date.

Thanks for stopping by.  I've got to hustle off to go buy the ingredients to make Christmas cookies.

That was one of my favorite memories with my Grama Lydia, and I hope to make it an annual tradition with Kaiden (3) & Kaitlyn (1) who are coming over today.  Wishing you a love-flled day.

"Grandchildren are sprinkles on the cookies of life." -Unknown

1-2-3 Come Make A Name Ornament With Me

I'm not sure about your kiddos, but as the last day before vacation neared, I could sense the energy levels climbing.  To help them stay focused, I always tried to do a few hands-on "craftivities" that my students would really enjoy, but also wanted to include standards to keep the administration content as well.

With that in mind, I designed the Keepsake Name Ornament packet.  It's a quick, easy & fun Christmas ornament that helps reinforce your students' names, letter recognition, vowel identification, capitalization, graphing, counting and addition!  Woo hoo! 

This would be a wonderful center on the last day before vacation, or a special "craftivity" to do for your Christmas party day. 

I've included upper as well as lowercase letter tiles that your students trim and glue to a strip of construction paper.  I used red & green, but just one color looks nice too.

While children are at lunch or recess, laminate your students' completed projects and have a room helper cut them out, punch a hole at the top & add a yarn tie.

Gluing on a school photo makes them even more special, and even though the ornament spells their name, have them write their name and the date on the back.

For some math fun, I've included two point value charts, so your students can practice a bit of addition, by adding up the point value of their letters. 

Use the chart with point values to 4, with younger students, and the chart with numbers to 26, for older students. Because their total will be large, have children figure out the place value of their name using this grand total.

There's an ornament worksheet to record their answer, along with other data, so that you can review consonants and vowels as well.  Students can color this ornament, or simply run off on a variety of colors of copy paper.

Vowels are also reviewed, with a graphing extension. There's a graph for the total number of letters in your students' names too.   As you can see, I've packed in all sorts of math extensions in this simple ornament "craftivity".

To add to the fun, I've included a "secret" coded Christmas message that you can challenge your students to solve.  Students refer to the point value poster to figure out what the sentence says. 

Make it a "speed" game, and see who can decode the message first. To save you time, I put two on a page for quick printing, and included an answer key.  Click on the link to view/download the Keepsake Name Ornament activities. 

Thanks for visiting today.  As always, my December days fly by.  I've got to get to the post office today or my family in Wisconsin, won't get their goodies in time for Christmas.  Wishing you a stress-free day.

"May voices join with the multitude of the heavenly host to proclaim His glory. May hearts be filled with His everlasting song of joy and peace this Christmas season."  -Unknown