Christmas Bible Lessons And Craft Ideas #1
I love the Christmas season and December is the perfect time to incorporate Christmas themed lessons and crafts into our homeschooling time.
Today we did two different crafts. One was to enhance our Bible lesson and one was specifically for our Tuesday arts and crafts time. ( I don’t do a craft every day. Usually Tuesday’s and Fridays are the days we do artsy stuff) The girls loved that they got to do two crafts today.
For our Bible lesson we did “The Legend Of The Candy Cane.” If you’ve never heard the story you can find it here. I actually like the story we used today better. This was the best link I could find in a jiffy. We got our story from a pamphlet passed out at a Live Nativity we went to this weekend. It has more detail than the link I provided. I thought it would make a perfect Bible lesson!
The candy canes I printed out are from here. Then I had the girls glue the candy cane cutout to paper and decorate the red stripes with red tissue paper. They did this as I was reading the candy cane story to them.
Then I let them eat a small candy cane as a treat. I also asked them what symbols they remembered from our story of the candy cane. Madelyn needed a little more help with remembering…
Pardon my mess in the background. We’ve been spreading out at the dining room table since my school room still has the bed my parents slept in two weeks ago for their visit. I’m “patiently” waiting for my husband to remove it so we can continue doing school in our school room.
The craft we did for our actual craft time today was taken from this Advent lesson and craft from Impress Your Kids. Yesterday we did a lesson on how Jesus’ birth gave us HOPE and that he is the LIGHT of of the world. Today we did the craft that goes with it.
We made candle holders out of jars and dyed rice. Amanda from Impress Your Kids used beautiful colored sand, nicer candles and jelly jars. I didn’t have any of those things so I dyed the last of my brown rice with food coloring (white is preferred but I had none) and cleaned out my fridge for some jars! Wow, did I have a lot of old jarred stuff in my fridge. I used rice because Amanda mentioned that as an alternative to the colored sand.
I only had enough rice for two colors so we chose red and green.
Per a tutorial I found online ( don’t remember where!!) I put rice in ziploc baggies, threw in a few drops of food coloring in the bag with some water. I shook it all around to mix it and let it sit for a few minutes. It doesn’t need a lot of time at all. 5-7 minutes is plenty. Once you see the rice is dyed you can pour it out. Then I poured the rice through a small colander to drain the water out and laid the rice out on paper towels to let it dry. It takes a while to dry and and giving it some turns with a spoon helps it go faster. I recommend you do this the day before if you’re going to do this craft with rice.
Then I let the girls go to town layering the two colors of rice in their jars.
The finished product! I made a little label to tape onto the jar that said ” Jesus is our HOPE, the LIGHT of the world.”. Then we put tea lights at the top and lit them. This craft obviously represents that Jesus is our light and the light of the world. If you’re really crafty and good with computers you could print a nice, decorative sticky label to apply to your jars. As you can guess, I, uh…. didn’t have printable labels.
The back, so you can see the layered effect better.
Madelyn’s jar was a little wider and I didn’t end up having enough rice to fill up her jar. But, she didn’t care!
We really enjoyed this craft and I think these jars make a wonderful addition to our Christmas decorations.
This post is linked to the Hip Homeschool Hop hosted by The Homeschool Chick and The Tuckers Take Tennessee.
