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 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

Another Quick, and Easy Keepsake!  This Is A Fun Center Too.

I do all sorts of fingerprint activities with my Y5’s. Among other things, it’s a great marker for 10-frames and a fun way for students to show an ABAB pattern.

Stamp pad ink is easily cleaned off an index finger with a sanitary wipe and I can set up a center on a TV tray.

Fingerprints pressed on art projects become keepsakes. Keeping that in mind, I try to design a few quick and easy ornaments that also involve some sort of standard.

The fingerprint tree involves a triangle + the concept of +1 more in each of the 4 rows, so my Y5’s come out with 10 green prints.  We work with base 10 though December so this is perfect.  To finish it off, they add a brown print for the trunk.

If you want your tree to be fuller, you can simply let your students do as many prints as they can fit as seen in the other sample.

Here's How:

Run off copies of the patterns.  The large trees are run off on emerald green construction paper, the smaller one on white construction paper.  This makes things nice and stiff.

You might not be able to tell on the photo, but I found some pale green marbled copy paper, which added a bit more pizzazz to my tree, so I used that.

I find that children are more coordinated using “Mr. Pointer”, but that their “thumb” often leaves a better -fatter” print, especially if you’re doing this one-on-one with a young child.

Make sure you remind them to press their finger on to the stamp pad every time, so they have enough ink to make a nice print.

Run off copies of the poem and trim them.  Students glue them on the bottom of the back of their trees.  A red heart sticker above the poem adds pizzazz.

Using a green crayon, have students sign their name and the year.   Teacher punches a hole at the top, adds a reinforcement circle and yarn tie.  A sparkly star at the top on both sides is also a nice accent.

Click on the link to view/print the Fingerprint Christmas tree patterns. If you'd like photo's + the article that has directions click on this link. Fingerprint Christmas tree "Stuff"

Let's Decorate:

Little ones will often want to “decorate” their trees.  They usually get carried away and you can’t see their prints any more, but they do look cute decorated.

What you can do, if you have the time, is let them make two.  Put a dollop of a variety of colors of paint on small paper plates.

Rest a Q-tip for each color on the plate. Instruct students to dab a tiny dot on their trees.  Demonstrating this, and having a completed sample is the only way to go.

They can also dab on tiny dots of Elmer’s glue and then put on a sequin, or sprinkle with one color of glitter.

It’s a good idea to have an adult supervising these stations, as most little ones have so much fun decorating, they don’t know when to stop.

I hope you have a “tree-mendous” time with your little one(s) making memories

Do you have a fun ornament that you make?  I'd enjoy hearing from you! diane@teachwithme.com  Be sure to pop in tomorrow and make a Keepsake Santa Handprint Windsock!