Snowman Garland! Easy DIY Christmas Craft/Decor with Kids

I have two grandsons and I am lucky enough to get to keep them pretty much once a week for "Grandma Day" (I even wrote and gave them a book about it and it's the youngest boys' way to tell his mom that Grandma hasn't been around enough :)

Anyway, today I decided to re-introduce one of the favorite Christmas crafts that I used to do with my own kids way back when. (My mom still has the ones I made her 18 years ago when my youngest was 1!)

This even works with some 1 year olds. Of course you can't strive for perfection with any kids, but especially not one year olds, but it can be done. In today's case, I just put some dots of glue on the plate, then Shepherd smeared it around and then slid the construction paper over the plate until it stuck or I gave him a new piece of paper to "stick". It was quite a game :)

Anyway, it's easy and probably quite obvious how you can make it, but I'll just give you some tips that I've found to make it simpler.

• Cut scrapbooking paper into squares, then as shown for your hat and three scarf pieces. This makes it easy to cut 5-6 pieces at a time, which is nice, especially if you have lots of kids... AND it makes your pieces more consistent.

• While the kids are busy playing, cut out some extra shapes for the eyes, mouth and nose. If you have kids old enough to cut, they can have fun cutting out some shapes and it will make your end product even more amazing.

Since my 3 year old loves to 'cut' (mostly just tearing with scissors) with scissors, I gave him an extra piece of paper and let him sit and cut while I was cutting out hats and things.

• For my 3 yo grandson, I just put dots of glue everywhere that a pice of paper would be. For the first one, I just put one dot at a time and then handed him the right paper. For the next ones, I put 3-4 dots at a time and let him pick out the papers so he could match the first one. That helps reinforce the colors, shapes and patterns that he's learned.

When my kids were a little older, I let them use glue sticks and put the pieces on where they wanted. That helps them with their fine motor skills as well!

• After they were dry, I added gold ribbon and let Lyric put glittery star stickers on the hats. When my kids were little, we often used Christmas ribbons, yarn or twine and they all gave their own 'flair' to the project.

Make it your own!

I have tons of ideas from when my kids were little that I want to pass down to the next generation here. I will probably post something on this topic each week, because my grandsons remind me of all these fun projects! #steemiteducation

You might also be interested in my other Holiday Idea Post that I posted after our Thanksgiving last week!