Drop-In and Get Crafty: Christmas

This year's Drop-In and Get Crafty: Christmas was a success all thanks to Santa! Santa visited the library during the same time the program was being held so I had a lot of Santa's little visitors come to craft time. We usually pair these two programs together so it becomes a big event.

It's also a great opportunity for me to reflect on the year here at the library and see all the faces that come throughout the year.

For this year's craft, we made a Santa ornament. I used die-cut pieces, googly eyes, and cotton balls to have them create a cute, homemade ornament to put on their tree.

Holiday coloring pages, stickers, and candy canes were put out as well.

Merry Christmas!

Drop-In and Get Crafty: Christmas

Who wouldn't love a library day that involves meeting Santa and doing a craft? This past Saturday was our day! The kids were able to tell Santa what they want for Christmas and get a picture and then move on to make a Santa finger puppet. 

I wanted to make sure the kids could play with their craft since always appreciate that.  Even though this was a lot to prepare for, it really worked out well.

We had a pretty big turnout and it was another fun drop-in!

Happy Holidays!
 

Toddler Art: Christmas

It was time for a Toddler Art Christmas! What I usually do closer to my Preschool Picasso and Toddler Art programs is go online and gather on Pinterest (some Google ideas too) all the crafts I think would work for my theme for that month for these programs and copy and paste pictures of each craft into a Word document. 

Once I'm satisfied with my choices and have enough crafts to make it difficult to choose, I print out my word document and start narrowing it down by what would be appropriate for each age group, what they would like, what would be doable and affordable and then get to it. 

As soon as I'm done choosing the two crafts I'll be using for each program, I get started on gathering supplies and prepping, which usually involves a trip to a store and some cutting, not as much cutting as the drop-in get crafty programs. 

For this holiday Toddler Art, we read Are You Grumpy, Santa? by Gregg and Evan Spiridellis, which is such a silly and fun holiday book. Once we were done reading together, we made Santa Claus and a present.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!
 

Drop-In and Get Crafty: Christmas

Christmas is almost here and it's time to get crafty! I think the Christmas drop-in is my favorite just because I get to see a bunch of familiar patron faces, play holiday music, and of course make a holiday craft. 

For this year's Christmas drop-in, we made a paper plate Santa Claus. The turnout was overwhelming because we had Santa himself visit the same time as the program, but this worked out beautifully because it paced the group perfectly from coming into our program room as opposed to past years where it would be very crowded at the beginning. 

I got my inspiration from this Santa craft, but just stuck with the cotton balls for the beard.

Ho! Ho! Ho!

Preschool Picasso: Christmas

This was a nice, holiday Preschool Picasso. I picked out one of our new Christmas books to read, One Cozy Christmas by Christina Butler. The kids liked the illustrations and were very good listeners during the story. This author has another book that is always a hit with the kids, so I knew they would like this one.

There are such great ideas for kids' Christmas crafts online that it was very hard to decide. After narrowing it down by what would be best for my group, I settled on a Santa Claus chalk craft and a paper plate ornament craft.

After reading, I explained the crafts and we got straight to it. We made Santa Claus using construction paper shapes and white chalk for his beard. We also went over the different shapes on the paper, which they were all experts at. 

For our last craft, we made colorful paper plate ornaments using red, blue, and green tissue paper and ribbon. 

It was great seeing the families and most of them said they would be able to make it to the drop-in craft program on Saturday.

Here comes Santa Claus!