Snowy Handprint Trees

So like I said in the previous post, we are celebrating all the crazy amounts of snow we have gotten this last week, with fun crafts.  I found this one on Kaboose.com.  It seemed so easy, and fun.  This was a 2 day process for us because a little one put WAY too much paint on hers.  We had to wait a full 24 hours for it to be totally dry. 

It started out with a sheet of blue and white construction paper.  Cut the white one so that it looks like sweeping hills of snow, and glue it down to the blue paper.  I went ahead and did this for the kids so we would be ready to go for the next step.  I had my foam brush (cheap at Michaels), washable brown paint, wet wipes (for easy clean up), egg carton cups, and large paint brushes for the kids all ready.  I use my egg cartons for paint cups.  I just cut them to how ever many I will need per project.  For this one, I had one cup per child.  I squeezed a small amount of paint into each cup.  I then put some brown paint in a larger plastic cup that I had leftover, so that I could paint hands.  I painted my hand first to show the kids what we were doing.  Cleaned myself up, and then helped each kid paint their hand.  I then showed them how to paint a trunk on our tree, and let them go at it.  This is why it's good to have wet wipes close at hand, it can get messy!

I left the pages dry on the table for a day.  Today I had glue sticks, small bowls with sugar, and small spoons ready to go.  I once again, showed the kids how to put glue on their picture where they would want the sparkling snow.  I made sure we did this in steps to minimize the sugar mess.  We started with the branches, dumped the excess off, then the ground, and then the flakes in the sky. 

Both kids had a great time doing this project, it was easy, and not too messy.   Adam did suggest that we could use Kosher salt or glitter so we wouldn't attract bugs.  But seeing that it's barely in the 20's, I'm not too worried about that right now.  After the kids were done, I did notice that the glue sticks were full of sugar.  Not to worry.  Wipe the glue stick across a wet wipe and it cleans it right up!

Hand prints waiting to dry

 Start sprinkling

 This is fun mom

 A close up of my tree

 Our three trees hanging on the pantry