Spoiler Alert! Parent Gifts

NOTE:  If you are the parent of a child in my classroom and you haven't opened your gift yet, you may want to skip reading this post or read it when your child isn't looking or read it later!!

Last week we were busy in the classroom making gifts to give parents for Christmas.  I wanted to find something for the children to make that fit the following criteria:  easy enough for preschoolers to complete pretty independently and something that the parents can bring out every year during the holidays.  Additionally, I wanted it to be something useful.  After quite a bit of Googling I stumbled across this idea and loved it.  Since I had to do gifts with 60 children my next task was to find a place to buy 60 globe shaped candle holders.  I ordered this kind from Dollar Tree.  They were available in smaller quantities at my close-by Dollar Tree, but I had to order them online to get the number I needed.  I had them shipped to the store which saved me the shipping costs.  I was really pleased with these.  They were all in great condition, packed well, and are a nice quality candle holder.

These candle holders were so quick to make and turned out really beautiful.   In case you would like to attempt this with many children I will tell you how I did it.  I set up a table in our classroom with 4 chairs.  I placed a vinyl gluing mat at three places and had three children at a time work on their candle holders.  I wrote each child's name on the bottom of their candle holder along with the year using a black Sharpie marker.  I gave each child a thick paintbrush (like the kind preschoolers would use on a paint easel) covered with white Elmer's glue.  I learned it was easiest to plop the glue-covered paintbrush into their candle holder instead of letting them dip the glue out of a bowl.  A large glob of glue was plenty for the project and when they dipped themselves the glue dripped all over the table and onto the sides and top of the candle holder.  After giving them the brush with glue they spread the glue all over the bottom and halfway up the sides of the candle holder.  Then they were able to choose what color glitter they wanted.........we had many colors to choose from.  This was super exciting since we don't use the glitter very often and young children LOVE glitter.  We dumped a fair amount of glitter into the bottom of the candle holder and then I showed them how to roll it around to get the glitter to cover the glue.  We dumped the extra glitter out onto a paper plate and that was it!!  Once they had dried a little bit the children chose tissue paper to wrap them, then we placed them into some brown lunch bags that they had stamped with Christmas stamps.  They added a tealight candle to the bag.  Then we folded over the top, punched two holes and tied a ribbon through.  They were SO excited to take these home to their parents.  By my best guess most of them could not wait until Christmas to have their parents open their gifts.  Even though my little boy is a student in my class and sat with ME to make MY gift, as soon as we got home that day he wanted me to open it right away! 

Here are some photos to illustrate what we did.  The first two photos show the candle holder my son made.  He used silver glitter and it turned out so pretty.

This photo shows our little gift bags all lined up and ready to go home.

 

Comments

[gift to the Philippines]

I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don't know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. Anyway, I'm been looking for topics as interesting as this. Looking forward to your next post.

-pia-

[CathyT]

I love this idea and think I'll try it for Valentine's Day with red glitter. Thanks for sharing your days with us.

[amber d.]

I lova lova lova these!!! They are so cute- we are making them for grandparents. And our son wanted me to open it this past Saturday. I am so happy I did, it is beautiful!

[amy]

yr the best ever! Kids are so lucky to have you (and parents too!) Happy Hols! xo