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! 🙂
Get Free Teaching Resources!
Join me for weekly classroom updates and free resources that are just-right for your guided math classroom!
Those are so pretty! And how brave of you. I would not trust my students this year with glass ornaments and paint. 🙂
Hahahaha – touche! 😉
Love this! Pinning for next year and headed to Hobby Lobby to stock up after Christmas 😉 I just hope I remember them in a year…hehe
Oooo – love the idea of buying the ornaments right after Christmas. 🙂 Thanks for the suggestion, Jen!
What type of paint did you use?
I just used Tempera paint from Hobby Lobby!
When you wash them with rubbing alcohol, do you then rinse with water or let them dry?
Hi Melissa! I just made them this year and I totally the rubber alcohol until we were starting. I just put a splash, swirled it around, and quickly drained them. Then, we put paint in them within minutes. It made them a little more slick (and more paint pooled to the bottom) but still worked! We're letting our ornaments drain tonight. 🙂
I know this is an older post, but I was wondering if clear plastic ornaments could be used instead of glass?
Hi Leigh! Yes, plastic ornaments work as well. 🙂