Christmas Ornaments Kids Can Make – Parent Gifts

The supplies were fairly minimal – glass ornaments (mine were purchased from Hobby Lobby when Christmas goodies were 50% off), tempera paint (or acrylic with older friends), ribbon for a hanger, Dixie cups, rubbing alcohol, and table coverings. Before beginning your adventure, make sure to wash out all of your ornaments with rubbing alcohol – this will ensure that the paint spreads easily inside the ornament.

 Many students also opted for the shaken approach. 😉 They poured paint into the ornament and then, carefully paced their thumb over the top of the ornament and shook for 5 seconds.

 When students finished their ornaments, they put their ornament upside down in a Dixie Cup in the window. The kids ended up using more paint than I did, so we needed to allow time for the excess paint to drain. Under each cup is a post-it note with the students’ name!

 After the ornaments dried, I put the put tops back on the ornament. BEWARE – do this yourself. Working with the tops, I broke 1 ornament…so I cannot imagine if my friends attempted this.

 Tomorrow, we’ll take 5 minutes or so to wrap our gifts. Our mini-gift bags were 3 for $1 from Dollar Tree and small ribbon for the ornament hangers from Hobby Lobby. (Note the handheld broom for any ornament causalities…there was only 1 causality today; fingers crossed for tomorrow).

 There you go! Overall it was a simple process. It definitely needed to be done in small groups and if you try it with your students, I would do a trial run yourself first. It’s one of those crafts that you need to try before teaching others how to do it. 😉

Do you do parent holiday gifts? What are your friends doing this year? I’d love to hear! 🙂