Christmas crafts

Christmas, this year, was not a typical Christmas in many ways. Since we could only bring a minimal amount of things to Korea, Christmas decorations didn't make the cut. The only thing we brought was our fake Christmas tree (which we hardly ever use because we always buy a real tree), and our stockings. We bought a box of decorations at the px to decorate our tree, but I knew that we would need to make it more special and personal than that.

Claire helping me to decorate the tree. (She gave the tree gifts like her doll and some gift ornaments. :))

Our decorated tree before the personalized touch. :) 

Our tree on Chrismas Eve with a lot of added love. 

I started off by buying four little ornaments for only $1 each where I could insert a picture of each of us.

The rest, though, were projects I looked forward to doing with Claire. Thanks to pinterest, I was able to find a lot of fun home made Christmas decoration ideas to make with kids. I included many of the activities in our paper chain advent calendar which I'll share with you next time.

Speaking of advent calendars, we did a bonus advent calendar where we got to fill in Santa's beard each day with a cotton ball. Claire looked forward to doing that every day and was quite excited when his beard was full!

Santa's beard is very bare. On his chin there is  no hair. So each day add a puff of white. When they are all on, he'll come that night!

Last year, we also started a new tradition of advent Sundays in an effort to focus on the real reason of Christmas. The four Sundays before Christmas, we had a little lesson and activity (FHE style) on a different portion of the Christmas story - the angel appearing to Mary, the angel appearing to the shepherds, Christ born in a stable, and the wise men visiting the Christ child. I made the same paper advent wreath as I did last year where we lit a new candle each week by taping on a paper flame. Some of the activities we did on advent Sundays also helped make our house more festive. :)

Claire helped me make it this year and colored the picture in the middle.

So here are the crafts that we made together this Christmas season. I LOVED doing this with Claire and loved the personal touch they added to our very different Christmas season this year in Korea.

Advent Sunday craft - paper plate angel! Claire loves any reason to use glitter glue. 

The finished angel, drying.

Speaking of angels and glitter glue, we made this angel chain and Claire decorated the three angels on the right before she got tired of it so I finished it. We had an identical chain we left plain that we put on the tree. 

Making a wreath of Christmas bows on a paper plate. 

One day, our activity was to make a popcorn chain. I hadn't done this since I was about 9 years old so I was pretty excited. We had great teamwork too. I put the popcorn through the needle, and Claire pulled the popcorn to the end of the string.

She also helped by eating some popcorn. :)

One day, our activity was to make a reindeer candy cane. I saw two designs I liked as well as another cute reindeer craft, so we did all three. :)

Claire with her three reindeer (and her kitty costume. She still LOVES to dress up.)

Putting the reindeer on the tree. I love the kitty tail. :)

Yes, she needed MORE glitter glue. :)

We made this sheep on the second advent Sunday (learning about the angel visiting the shepherds.) The legs are made out of her hand traced on paper. I liked it so much we also made it in preschool a couple of weeks later.

I taught the last week of preschool before Christmas. On the last day, I wanted to share about the symbols of Christmas, and how they all point to the real reason of Christmas, even though many people don't even realize it. Though there are more symbols of course, we talked about the Christmas tree, candy cane, star, angel, sheep, candles/ lights, and gifts. They made a candle craft out of a toilet paper roll, the sheep shown above, and an angel craft. They also had a fun counting game with various amounts of ornaments on Christmas trees, and they had to put the star with the correct number on the top (#1-14.) At the end, I gave them gifts which were little laminated magnetic nativity sets that they could play with and arrange on the fridge. It was a great class. :)

One advent Sunday, I gave Claire this cute paper nativity scene I found on pinterest. She was free to color and play with it however she liked. Cute, huh?

 Finally, our last craft we did was a gingerbread train. We usually do a house, but decided to mix things up a bit this year. Claire had a lot of fun helping me decorate the train (Chris put it together for us first), and especially loved sampling the candy that came with the kit.