Gather your materials: Empty ribbon spool, paper, beads or beans, glue stick.

1. Use a piece of ribbon to trace a strip of paper the width of the ribbon and long enough to go once around the spool.  Cut out and glue the strip around the spool.  Alternately, you can use a piece of the ribbon itself for this step.

2. Trace two circles onto the paper using the spool as a template.  Cut out and glue one circle to the side of the spool.

3. Turn over the spool and put the beads into the hole in the spool.  I used two different sizes to create a more interesting sound.

4. Glue the other circle to the open side of the spool.  Now, shake, shake, shake!

You can also embellish the maraca with glitter, markers, stickers, or anything else to make it unique!

My kids LOVE that site.  We have armies of papercraft ninja turtles and other characters lying around the house.

The D got creative with the Super Mario Bros. characters and Super NES paddles.

And here is Little E’s copycat version, featuring the infamous piranha plant.

Gather your ingredients: Graham crackers, marshmallows, chocolate candy melts (or other chocolate to melt), lollipop sticks.

Put the graham crackers in a bag and crush them with a rolling pin. Pour crumbs into a small bowl.

Melt the chocolate using your favorite method. I am lucky enough to have children who thought to buy me a chocolate melter for Christmas one year. (I can’t imagine why they would do that!)

While your chocolate melts, push a lollipop stick about half-way into each marshmallow.

Once your chocolate is ready, dip a marshmallow in, tapping off the excess. Then dip the chocolaty marshmallow into the prepared crumbs.

Set the pops in a glass to dry. (Or stick them in a styrofoam block.)

Voila.

You can also make them stickless.  (Place on waxed paper to dry.)

However you make ‘em, your kids will love ‘em!

(That picture really should have been cuter, but Little E did not want to stop eating to pose for multiple shots.)

This morning Big E (age 10) and Little E (age 5) made stuffed felt valentines.

First, we made the felt hearts.  You can make a template out of construction paper, which I did, or you can ask Google for one.  Make sure it is large enough to sew together and stuff.

Trace the heart onto the felt and carefully cut it out.  You will need two felt hearts.  We used red and white.  When they are both cut out, line them up and trim any excess, so they are the same exact size (or so).  Big kids can do this step, but little ones might need help.

Next, have the kids decorate the hearts.  Little E drew the word “love” on his with marker.  Big E embroidered the word in red floss on the white heart.  (By himself!)

Then, it is time to sew the hearts together, leaving a space to stuff.  For Little E, I made holes around his hearts and he used a plastic yarn needle and embroidery floss (the full 6 strands) to sew his together.  He had a blast and was so proud of his sewing.  (Or is the sew proud?)  I used a hold punch to make the holes, but it broke (not because of the felt; it was just old), so I made the rest of the holes with a seam ripper, using the yarn needle to make the hold bigger before I gave it to Little E to sew.

Here are the finished projects.  The boys did not want to show their faces in the final pictures, even though that would have been cute.

Little E’s valentine:

Big E’s Valentine:

I thought I would take a little time in between my Christmas baking to post some links and pictures.

Today, I am making peanut butter, peanut butter chip cookies for my sister’s boyfriend, brownies for my mother’s boyfriend, Oreo cookie bark for my mother’s boyfriend’s brother, and a chocolate cream pie (with homemade crust), pineapple upside-down cake, and rolls for our Christmas eve dinner at my mother’s house. That might sound like a lot, but I really enjoy baking.

This week, the kids and I made a lot of ornaments. Here are a few of my favorite.

This one comes from Martha Stewart. The instructions are here. There was a video, but I can’t find it right now.

It is made from strips of paper (or old Christmas cards) and brads (paper fasteners). I like it because you can make it as simple as construction paper and office brads,

or take it up a level with scrapbook paper and fancy fasteners, like these snowflakes that I found in the scrap booking section of the craft store.

We also made these ribbon candy ornaments, also found on Martha Stewart.

Here are the instructions. This one has a link to watch the video. This was easy enough for the 8- and 10-year-olds to do.

Here is one more ornament that the kids made. Simply take a styrofoam ball and wrap it with variegated Christmas-colored yarn. Embellishments, such as sequins and beads, can be added with straight pins. Tie a ribbon around and secure a bow at the top with a straight pin.

Have a merry Christmas!

To show my appreciation for you stopping by my little corner of the blogosphere, here are some links to some kid friendly ideas I found recently on the web.

Amazing Science Projects, from Kids (Martha Stewart).
Yarn Cards, from Kids.
Printable, customizable Veggie Tales and 3-2-1 Penguins gift tags, from Big Idea.
Veggie Tales Christmas printables, from Big Idea.
Design and print your own Jan Brett Christmas tree, from Jan Brett (This one does not work with Firefox).

Craft 12: Tree place card

Craft 13: Yarn snowflake ornament

We will definitely be doing this one. They look really neat and fun to make.

I made a really cool snowflake out of a white pipe cleaner (chenille stem). I will post a picture and instructions (hopefully) tomorrow.

For those of you just tuning in, our previous Kids Christmas Crafts are posted here, here, and here.

Craft 7:

This is a classic. We used to make these when I was in elementary school.

Cut strips from construction paper. I used a ruler lined up lengthwise with the edge of the paper to make the strips a uniform width. You need one strip for the center color and two strips of each of the other colors.

Leave two strips the full length. Cut one inch off the next color pair. Cut two inches off the center strip. Now you have 5 strips, in three lengths.

Place the strips in a pile in the following order: longest, middle-length, shortest, middle-length, longest. Line up on one end and staple. Now line up the other ends and staple. Hole punch and thread through a piece of yarn for hanging.

You can also make these with more than three colors and/or vary the amount that you cut off for different designs.

Craft 8:

This is a quick and easy craft.

Simply cut a circle out of green construction paper or cardstock. Cut it into a spiral. Decorate with glitter glue, markers, or other embellishments.

Punch a hole in the center to thread on yarn, or staple yarn on, for hanging.

If desired, glue a star on the top.

The green is supposed to make it look like a tree, but I think these are fun to make in all colors.

Craft 9:

A gingerbread house!

Making gingerbread houses with your kids has never been easier now that most stores carry kits with the pre-baked gingerbread pieces and all of the candy and frosting.

Crafts 10 and 11:

These two crafts both come from The Toymaker (Hat tip: Homeschool Hacks).

This is an awesome site.

The first craft is 3D stars the the kids colored and cut out. The folding is a little tricky, so you might have to do that part.

These look nice nestled in the branches of the Christmas tree. (Sorry, no picture of that.)

The next craft is a dodecahedron with cute snowmen printed on it. The folding and gluing for this make it a bit tricky for the kids, but they love playing with this little paper “ball” when it is finished.

For a more kid-involved craft, print out a blank dodecahedron for them to color.

The Toymaker is a wonderful site with lots of mama crafts, too, like this three-dimensional angel house made from folded printer paper. (Found here.)

Wow! I actually caught up, even with the snow days. I’ll be back later to post today’s craft.

A free craft time resulted in a Santa made from a toilet paper tube and construction paper, courtesy of Big E.

Here are some directions from Family Fun for a similar craft.

December 6:

We made tabletop trees out of construction paper using this project from Family Fun as a guide.

Using the Family Fun template (link opens PDF), we cut our trees out of green paper. We followed the method for the tree card, but we did not make them cards. Instead, we glued the tab to the inside of the other end of the tree to make it permanently stand open.

To get more than one color of circle “ornaments” on the tree, we punched more holes after the first color of paper was glued on. Then, we glued on another color of paper to the back of our tree (over the first color).

Big E even added a star to the top of his on one side. And Big D added a cross to the trunk with a decorative hole punch we have.

Here are ours.

From Left to right: Big D, mine, Big E, Little E (with my help cutting).