A Young Child's Handcrafted Christmas Card

Everyday during the month of December, instead of daily candy from our Advent calendar, I've given Mischa a task to complete that is selfless or thoughtful. (Except the week we missed when she had the flu.)  One of the things I set up for her to do is make Christmas cards for family and friends to show them that she loves them and was thinking about them. The design is really simple and you can do them with any child that has started coloring or scribbling. Mischa has been at it for a few days and still has a couple more to do- of course we have a rather large family!

 What I Used:

1. A Christmas Coloring Book

2. Some white printer paper

3. 5 3/4 x 8 3/4 sized envelopes (or larger)

4. Green construction paper

5. Scissors, glue, colored pencils, crayons, markers, glitter, stickers... etc. 

First, I let Mischa color some of the pictures she liked from her coloring book. 
Second, I let her pick parts of her picture to "sparkle" as she called it using colored glitter glue. I did the glitter part because she didn't like getting it on her hand... even though she liked seeing them sparkle. 
Third, we cut out the pictures (after the sparkles dried) and glued them onto white printer paper folded in half. Even though she colored a bunch of pictures it only took her a short time because she was eager to get glitter on them. You can see where she started scribbling in order to get to the glitter step. This is the front of the cards.

Fourth, I had her write "Merry Christmas! Love, Mischa" on some scraps of paper. (If you have a child that can't write yet you can always do this step for them.) She drew "Christmas" pictures around the words and then pasted it onto the inner right side of the card. 

Fifth, on the inner left side of the cards she glued little green construction paper Christmas trees (triangles) that I had precut for her. She then decorated the Christmas trees with stickers and markers. 

The last thing I had her do was write out the names of those who she is sending the card to.

The end result of the inside of the card looked like this... 

You can see she misspelled "Christmas" on the top card... I'm sure Nana won't mind. 

She personally gave a couple cards to some friends and family already. I enjoyed seeing her light up when her hard work was praised and she made a smile on the face of someone she loves. 

Learning benefits:

1. Strengthens writing hand with all that coloring.

2. I asked her questions about triangles whenever she pasted each tree and if she didn't know the answer I'd tell her. (Is this a polygon? How do you know it's a polygon? How many sides does a triangle have? What kind of triangle is this tree?) So, it reinforced her knowledge of certain kinds of triangles.

3. It reinforced her writing and challenged her as she had to write without line perimeters.

4. It teaches her that not only should one give to others but they also ought to work hard in order to give to others. 

Thank you for reading. I hope you have a wonderful Christmas Season! Feel free to post any question or comment you have below. 

Happy Homeschooling!
~Mickaela