How to Make Winter Crafts for Kids

It's the second day of winter vacation and already the kids are bored. Now is a great time to break out some decorative winter crafts. If you love crafts and your house is full of glue guns and glitter, wonderful. But if the last time you tried to make a craft you couldn't get the parts to fit and then dropped half of them on the floor, don't despair. There are projects for all ages and levels of skill. And some of nicest ones are the simplest.

Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• Food coloring
• Pinecones or other large seed pods
• Paper cups
• Paper cut-out shapes of various sizes
• Plastic containers of various sizes and shapes, such as yogurt or margarine containers
• Various decorative materials: buttons, paper, cloth, glitter, beans, macaronis, etc., etc
• Paint and brushes
• Glue
• Paper plates
• Styrofoam balls

Make Ice Sculpture Crafts

1. Fill several paper cups with water and add a few drops food coloring to each so that you have a cup of red water, yellow, blue and so forth. Kids may like to mix the primary colors to create secondary colors (green, orange and purple).
2. Pour the colored water into freezable containers until they are about one-third full. Put the containers in the freezer for about an hour or until the water is solid.
3. Take out the containers and add on another layer of different colored water. Freeze again. Repeat until you have all the layers you want.
4. Run warm water over the containers until the contents release. "Decant" the containers and place the sculptures around the yard or the patio.
5. Make hanging sculptures by putting a piece of string in the ice containers before you pour in the water. The string should hang over the edge of the cup by 3 or 4 inches.
6. Find more ideas at Kids Domain (see Resources below).

Make Pinecone Crafts

7. Gather together as many pine cones or other seed pods as you can. Cover your work area with newspaper. Put out paint, glue, glitter (in a plastic bag), spray-on snow or whatever decorative materials you have.
8. Make the surface of the pine cone sticky using glue, paint or spray snow. Shake it in the bag of glitter; stick sequins or bits of colored tissue paper or yarn or whatever you like on it. You may also paint it by hand with gold or silver craft paint. If you have flat pods, you may paint a figure or pattern on the surface with a very thin brush.
9. Have kids look at the shapes of the cones or pods. Do they remind you of an animal, person or object? Add buttons, cloth, macaronis, pipe cleaners or whatever you have to turn it into your imaginary item.

Make Snowman Crafts

10. Make a snowman by gluing together graduated Styrofoam balls. Add bean or button eyes, a toilet paper roll top hat, scrap material for a scarf and whatever else you like.
11. Create a snowman by gluing together graduated paper plates. Draw or paint on a face, features and accessories.
12. Fashion a snowman by gluing together paper cut-out shapes--for example, circles for the body, small diamonds for eyes and triangles for buttons.

Tips & Warnings

• In warmer climates, pinecone crafts can be done with jacaranda or other large seed pods.
• The ice sculpture craft can only be done in cold winter climates.

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