little waldorf classmate christmas gifts

Around this time of year, Naiya and I try to come up with some small hand made gift to give to all her classmates for the holidays.  We often draw on successful craft projects from the past and this season we feel especially pleased with our results.  Since I've only got about three people (other than my mother) who are local readers, I'm going to risk surprising our school friends and go ahead and share our idea (which we're not handing out until Thursday) for those who might still be looking for inspiration for similar purposes.

We had everything for this craft leftover from the year, but even if supplies were purchased, this little holiday offering ends up costing less than a dollar per. 

For a recent local craft market, we helped our school fashion over a hundred of the paper lanterns seen in the tutorial here.  Since the paper started as a rectangle but required a square, we were left with many, many scrap strips and from them made these teeny tiny lanterns as our gift "containers".

Then, re-using an idea from Naiya's birthday treasure hunt, we made these holiday themed "dragon tears".  Like in the tutorial shown here, we painted the backs gold and also glued on a magnet.  They're pretty and useful!





 

We laid a tuft of wool roving in the star, nestled the magnet stone inside and wrapped the whole thing in some white tulle bound with a red ribbon.  With a little more of that scrap water colored paper we also attached a brief greeting.

Children can contribute to the making of these presents by painting the watercolor sheets for the stars and gluing the little paper pictures and magnets onto the stones. 

... Hand made, inexpensive, small and ready for sharing on our last day before winter break.  Merry Christmas friends!



(For additional hand made little gifting ideas, try also clicking here for a pocket pal tutorial, here for a sand candle how-to, here for some super easy to sculpt little oven fire clay houses, here for a beeswax polish tutorial or here for a play dough recipe.  Alternately, try just scrolling through the "crafty craft" label list seen to the right.  Happy holidays and happy crafting! )