Winter is coming fast and so is the holiday season. The kids are super excited about Christmas and are hyped about making Christmas tree ornaments. This hanging snowflake was easy and yet, messy enough for the kids to really feel like they had a large part in the creation of the ornament. You’ll notice we completed this craft outside.
Hanging Snowflake
Supplies
- 3 craft sticks
- glitter
- markers
- glue
- paper
**The inspiration and materials for this post were provided by Mother Goose Time.
Discuss
- How many points will your snowflake have?
It’s up to you and your kids how many points and sides your snowflake creation will have. Real snowflakes have six sides and since my daughter already knows this from one of our favorite books, Snowflake Bentley our snowflakes had six sides and points as well. If your child doesn’t know this, the snowflakes can easily be made to have more points and sides by including additional craft sticks. The Make and Play example from Mother Goose Time used four crafts sticks and had eight sides and points.
Make
- Glue the sticks together to create a snowflake design.
- Use markers or glitter to decorate the snowflake.
Our Experience
The kids counted the points on their example snowflakes from Mother Goose Time. My son laid the craft sticks over the big snowflake to recreate the pattern.
Once we decided to have six pointed snowflakes, the kids each stacked the craft sticks to create their snowflake. Since they wanted to use the snowflakes as Christmas tree ornaments, I hot glued the sticks together.
The kids elected to paint their snowflakes blue. You could also choose to have them paint the sticks prior to gluing them together, but the kids were happiest painting them once they were already in a snowflake shape.
After gluing on a piece of string to enable hanging the snowflakes, the kids added some glue in their pattern of choice.
The kids elected to have silver glitter for the snowflakes. Using a salt shaker to keep glitter spread to a minimum has helped! We still do the crafts outside, but there are far fewer spills and catastrophic events.
Play
Place the snowflake on the sheet of paper and trace around it. Color the snowflake outline. Ask a peer to trace his snowflake on a sheet of paper.
Observe
Did the child layer the craft sticks on top of each other to create a snowflake?
What words did he use to describe the locations of the sticks?
My Creative Mind Daily Notes
My Creative Mind is a tool used by Mother Goose Time preschool programs to help parents facilitate conversations with their children about their artwork. A description is given of the activity with a couple questions to help parents support their children’s learning and creativity.
Today I made a snowflake.
I arranged craft sticks to design my own falling snowflake. My snowflake will look different from all the others because each one is unique. I practiced my spatial awareness skills when I moved the craft sticks to create the snowflake.
Ask Me
Did you count how many points your snowflake has?
Where will you keep your snowflake?
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Happy Learning,
