Three Crafts...

1.  Captain America shield.  This one is my favorite, especially because it happened spontaneously.  Nathan asked if he could have a Captain America shield.  I happened to have a round piece of cardboard sitting in the recycling bin, so I drew the circle outlines and let him color them in with red, white and blue.  I cut out a star for him, and he glued it on.  And finally, we used a strip of cardboard to form a handle on the back.  Voila!  Captain America!  (Aaron of course then wanted one, so I cut a circle out of another box we had to make a second one.  Easy peasy.)

2.  Snowflake ornaments.  I love craft sticks.  You can do so many easy things with them.  This one did require a few separate steps.  First, the boys painted the sticks white.  Once the paint dried, they glued them together - you just form two Xs, and then glue those together to form the snowflake.  Once the glue dried, they spread glue on each stick and sprinkled them with their choice of colored glitter.  We glued a circle of ribbon to the back for a hanger.  They are a fun and sparkly addition to the tree!

3.  Colorful 3D Glue Art.  The results of this activity are shown in the three pieces on the top left above.  (As you can see, we did a lot of art last weekend.)  To create, use a piece of card stock (regular paper is too thin).  Let the kids make a swirly design with glue.  Sprinkle salt over the wet glue and tap off the excess.  Then, using droppers, let the kids put drops of colored water on the glue.  The colors will travel down the glue paths, and when colors meet, they will blend.  Easy to reinforce the primary vs. secondary colors.  You do have to be careful not to let the colored water get too messy, because blue + red + yellow makes brown!  It would be best to have a separate dropper for each color.  In the absence of that, just be careful and rinse it out every now and then.   Very fun!