Room Mom needs help with school party ideas!!!

[mermaidwannabe]

I'm a Room Mom for a first grade and third grade class. I had bought snowflake and party bag crafts from Oriental Trading, but I just realized I didn't order enough for both classes! Does anyone have any good class activity ideas that I could put together or get from Michaels? Also, I thought about having the kids decorate cookies, but then would each have to have their own bags of colored frosting?? I have an hour for the parties and you all know how fast kids can finish activities. Any ideas???? Thank you!

 

[ntink]

If you pm me I can email you a MS Word doc that I helped to put together for our elementary school that lists games crafts and food projects for fall, winter and spring.

 

[maggiew]

I'm a room mom too. Michaels has some cute crafts this year. They have those foamy kits that you glue pieces together. There are some to make picture frames or ornaments w/pictures or some cute snowmen that look like smores.

Also try looking at http://www.familyfun.com I got some cute ideas there too.

Maggie

 

[LMC]

If you need more of the small gift bags, the Dollar Tree usually has those plastic ones that work really well. You could make a snack that they could decorate then eat. This is how it works:
Get some of those cone shaped water cups, and an aluminum muffin tin or other pan. Poke holes in the aluminum pan so the cones will sit in the pan in an upright position. Mix a regular cake mix (white would be good and add green food color if you want) these will be (Christmas) Trees. Aftger baking, remove the paper cone cup from the cake and sit it on a serving tray with the point up. Then get some of those small icing packs and decorations and the kids can decorate their own trees then eat them.

 

[dizagain]

Hi! There was a cool thread along these lines last week I believe...not sure what it was called...anyone remember? Anyway, there were some good ideas there~!

 

[mermaidwannabe]

These are great ideas. I'm going to use of them that was making a pinecone bird feeder using peanut butter and birdseed. I have 50 beautiful pinecones sitting in my crawl space from my mother-in-law's house near West Yellowstone, so those will be great! I'm also going to make beaded snowflake ornaments that I purchased from Oriental Trading but could be bought anywhere, I imagine. The third activity I"m going to do for my 1st grader's class is to make the inverted sugar cone Christmas trees thanks to NTINK. Now I just need a few more ideas for my third graders class. I did see a craft online where you buy jingle bells and pipe cleaners to make bracelets or something to put on a door.

 

[jennifer293]

I am a room mom too!!! What we did was take the frosted blue glass ornaments (the round ones) and took white paint and painted each childs hand and then had them grasp the ornament, so it left the handprint on the ornament. Then we let them take sharpies and draw body parts for each finger tip it became a snowman's body complete with eyes, carrot nose, buttons up the chest and a red scarf. then on the back of the ornament we took a pretty gold pen and wrote their name and the year. They turned out VERY CUTE!!!!! and they will always have it for their tree for years to come...

Buy a few more than you need as they will get broken..LOL


Out of 20 kids we had 4 break...but you can get 24 of them at Walmart for 1.88 , and we just used the Tempura paint the school had and the sharpies the teacher had already....

VERY CHEAP PROJECT!!!!

 

[shades]

Mini Christmas trees - use pinecones for the trees, and provide a mixture of sparkly things for the kids to glue on.

Paint ceramic Christmas ornaments - buy cheap flat ceramic ornaments, supply skinny ribbon for the hanger part, paints & brushes.

Candy cane reindeer - candy cane, little eyes, pipe cleaners (brown=antlers), tiny red fuzz balls for nose

 

[MEM]

I ran the Christmas crafts night for DS boy scout troop last year - one of the most popular crafts was a take-off on a Martha Stewart project. We made a type of scrapbook for holiday greeting cards using 2 pieces of mat board cut to size (larger than the largest greeting card), grommets - one in the upper corner of each piece of mat board and metal rings (that snap or pull open) from the office supply store to connect the two pieces of mat board -- the idea is to punch a hole in the upper corner of each greeting card you receive and then add it to the scrapbook. We decorated the front with labels I made in advance on my computer and winter- and Christmas-themed self-adhesive foamies. The scrapbook can be re-used each year by changing the label.

 

[CinRell]

oooh I used to work at a day care and LOVED Xmas projects!

For the cookies no you don't need to have icing for all.. YOU ice the cookies let them decorate wtih sprinkles, candies (m n m's, gummies) etc... that's great fun.

Another cute craft is getting puff balls (not sure what they're called) and glue them 3 together like a snow man. Googly eyes and hats etc to glue on.. and you can get magnet strips for the back. We did caterpillars like this once.. VERY cute and it's a nice useable take-home or gift

Cutting snowflakes from tissue paper is fun too then they can hang them in the window.. you know.. fold fold fold snip.. or 2 pieces of black paper folded, designs clipped then unfold, put a colored tissue paper between and paste the 2 together.. this makes a pretty stained glass window.

I always loved the pine cone Xmas tree someone suggested

If you have a poloroid you can have them make simple round ornaments decorated with glitter, punch hole in the top and threat yarn.. on the center take each child's photo in front of a tree or something and paste it on. Those are nice.

Xmas cards are always basic and fun too and children always have fun with glitter, beads, cotton, paint etc. It gets messy but kids love it.

I have tons of ideas if you'd like more

 

[mermaidwannabe]

GREAT IDEAS!!!! Now I don't know if I should do the birdfeeder or the Christmas tree with the pinecones. I love the ornament idea and the scrapbook, too. I wasn't born with any creative genes, so thank goodness for this board.

 

[mermaidwannabe]

oooh I used to work at a day care and LOVED Xmas projects!

For the cookies no you don't need to have icing for all.. YOU ice the cookies let them decorate wtih sprinkles, candies (m n m's, gummies) etc... that's great fun.

Another cute craft is getting puff balls (not sure what they're called) and glue them 3 together like a snow man. Googly eyes and hats etc to glue on.. and you can get magnet strips for the back. We did caterpillars like this once.. VERY cute and it's a nice useable take-home or gift

Cutting snowflakes from tissue paper is fun too then they can hang them in the window.. you know.. fold fold fold snip.. or 2 pieces of black paper folded, designs clipped then unfold, put a colored tissue paper between and paste the 2 together.. this makes a pretty stained glass window.

I always loved the pine cone Xmas tree someone suggested

If you have a poloroid you can have them make simple round ornaments decorated with glitter, punch hole in the top and threat yarn.. on the center take each child's photo in front of a tree or something and paste it on. Those are nice.

Xmas cards are always basic and fun too and children always have fun with glitter, beads, cotton, paint etc. It gets messy but kids love it.

I have tons of ideas if you'd like more

Those are great. Sure, I'd love to hear more. If nothing else, I'm going to write all of these down for when I'm Room Mom again or just doing with my three little girls at home. They're great gift ideas for grandparents too.

 

[CinRell]

Re: Birdfeeder..... Just so you know feeding birds peanut butter .. especially in the cold winter.. isn't necessarily a good idea. It can cause very sticky beaks for smaller birds (well, any bird I guess) and they don't hve the lips/teeth/ or kind of tongue we do to work it out... and in cold winter there isn't always water available to help with the process. I read somewhere it could cause harm and a SAFE alternative is to use regular BUTTEr which will also hold the seed

 

[mermaidwannabe]

Re: Birdfeeder..... Just so you know feeding birds peanut butter .. especially in the cold winter.. isn't necessarily a good idea. It can cause very sticky beaks for smaller birds (well, any bird I guess) and they don't hve the lips/teeth/ or kind of tongue we do to work it out... and in cold winter there isn't always water available to help with the process. I read somewhere it could cause harm and a SAFE alternative is to use regular BUTTEr which will also hold the seed

Thank you!!!!! I had noticed NTINK used lard in her birdfeeder craft instructions instead of pb too. I will definitely NOT use it...plus now that I think of it, there may be someone with a nut allergy in one of the classrooms. I'm now leaning towards using the pinecone as an ornament...painting and using ribbon.

 

[elan]

Do you plan on playing any games?

 

[CinRell]

You can roll the pinecone in glue then sprinkle with glitter too..

here's another ADORABLE idea I always loved.. get yellow and brown construction paper. On the yellow (or orange).. have the kids trace their hands then cut them out. With brown, cut out oval for face and ears.. glue together to make a reindeer face with ears .. the hands are the antlers. draw eyes or use googly eyes and a red pom pom for the nose.

Ok I'm starting to hate my job now I wanna be a room mom

 

[jennifer293]

You can roll the pinecone in glue then sprinkle with glitter too..

here's another ADORABLE idea I always loved.. get yellow and brown construction paper. On the yellow (or orange).. have the kids trace their hands then cut them out. With brown, cut out oval for face and ears.. glue together to make a reindeer face with ears .. the hands are the antlers. draw eyes or use googly eyes and a red pom pom for the nose.

Ok I'm starting to hate my job now I wanna be a room mom

We did something similar to this last week, but with brown we just folded it in a triangle shape, and the nose was a piece of red paper cut out round with glitter on it. They love glitter time..>LOL


Also I had no clue abut the birdfeeder and the birds , I have 2 hanging on my backporch right now. Those little boogers are coming down ASAP!!!!
Thanks for the tip!!!!

 

[HaleyB]

Super easy craft:

Buy the large bucket of Crayola Wonder Clay (or it is called something close to that, it is air drying "clay") in white from Mikes- with a 40% off coupon it is $13.

Use plain white paper plates as a base, glue cotton balls onto it. Add glitter if you want. Make snowmen out of the clay. You can color the clay with plain old regular markers after it is dry. The color comes out nice and bright. We use a black marker (the thin ones are best) and make dots for eyes and the mouth. We make a carrot nose with an orange marker... they can go as fancy or simple as they like.

You can also work glitter into the clay before you make the snowman for sparkle. I use felt to make a scarf and real twigs for the arms. The kids LOVE this craft. We are doing for the third year in a row at the kids request!

This is a really good choice for older grades, as the kids are pretty much past wanting to make anything 'cute' and they have done all the glue and paper type crafts before.

 

[Ladyw/theTramp]

Do you plan on playing any games?

I need game ideas for my kindergarten class.. Have any ideas??

 

[D L and K's Mom]

I teach First Grade and I try to limit the party to 1 and 1/2 hours. If we have it any longer it tends to get out of control!! I usually have one parent at a story center (read a story with a small craft...last year a snowman story and a snow man with cotton balls), a cookie decorating center, a reindeer food station (they get to measure and tie the ribbon on the bag), an ornament station (cinnnamon clay dough last year this year its a candy cane....pipe cleaner and alternating red and white beads with the legend of the candy cane attached). We do this for an hour changing stations every 15 minutes and then we have snack (cookies and punch) and then I read a story and we have a book exchange ($5.00 limit) all students bring one wrapped book and we put them in my Christmas basket and they all choose one. Last year the gift the children made for their parents was a fleece scarf. I bought the fleece when it was not so expensive. They measured a foot and cut it (it was hard to cut) and then they "Frayed" the edges. This was a lot easeir then cutting the long piece. I had cut red hearts out of felt and the children wrote Love,Susy etc. on the heart with white fabric marker. One of the moms sewed them on the scarves for us. This year I still have not come up with a nice craft...I better decide soon as we are running out of time!!!!

I am putting the recipe for reindeer food here and the cinnamon clay. Good luck!!!1

Magic Reindeer Food
1/2 c. dry oatmeal
1/3 c. sparkly glitter
1 heartful of Christmas hope

Mix ingredients together. On Christmas Eve sprinkle all over your lawn. The glitter will shine in the moonlight and lead Santa to your house before dawn. The smell of the oats will guide the reindeer directly to your rooftop. The Christmas hope in the magic reindeer food guarantees Santa will stop.


Cinnamon Clay Ornaments

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This recipe makes dough that smells great which can be used to make christmas ornaments, package decorations, or three- dimensional sculptures. The crafts made form this project make excellant Christmas gifts too!

Materials needed:

•1 1/2 cups ground cinnamon
•1 cup applesauce
•1/3 cup white school glue
•1 medium sized bowl
• Flat surface for kneading
• Waxed paper
• Rolling pin
• Cookie cutters
• Knife
• Straw
• Non-stick cooling rack
• Ribbon
•Optional supplies- puffy fabric paints or acrylic paint.

1. Mix cinnamon, applesauce, and glue.

2. Knead the mixture on a flat surface until it turns into a firm clay. (Abround 10 minutes. Do not get discouraged when you see that the dough is wet and really sticky, because that is the way it is supposed to be.)

3. Place the dough in a zip lock bag and make sure to remove all the air before sealing. Then allow the dough to rest covered with a damp cloth for 30 minutes.

4. This clay is easier to use if it is at room temperature, so do not refrigerate. Also you may want to knead the dough before rolling it out if the dough is cracking.

5. Dust your rolling pin, hands and working surface lightly with cinnamon, or cover your working surface with waxed paper.

6. Using a rolling pin, roll the clay out 1/8 inch thick.

7. Using cookie cutters, cut the dough out into the shapes you wish to use. *HINT: Roll the dough out onto the cookie sheet so that the dough shapes retain their shape. If you do it ont he table and try to pick up the dough shape it may break or tear or loose it's shape.

8. If you are going to hang the ornaments, use a drinking straw to punch a hole near the top of the ornament.

9. Place the ornaments on a cooling rack covered with waxed paper. Turn them over occasionally so that they dry evenly and flat .

10. Allow the shapes to air dry at least 5 days. You may also place them in a 100 degree oven to dry them a little faster.

11. When the ornaments are dry, tie a ribbon through the hole to hang it on the tree or tie it to a Christmas gift.

12. To decorate your shapes you may paint them with acrylic paints or simply add a little fabric paint for accents. Glitter looks great as well, or you may wish to leave them looking natural.

We sent them home "wet" and they had to dry. This was pretty messy. I would suggest trying to make them before.