Friday, December 26, 2014

Christmas Around the World

Originally posted 12/19/14

Wednesday, we grabbed our passports and our imaginations and off we flew for a whirlwind trip around the world!

We started out in Germany, were we learned that gingerbread girls and boys, Christmas trees, and tinsel originated. We read Cobweb Christmas, the fabulous story of Tante and how sad the spiders were when they were not invited in to see Tante's Christmas tree. They asked Kris Kringle (or the Kristkind) if he would let them in to see Tante's Christmas tree. They looked all around and when they were done, they had left a mess of webs and sticky strings all over Tante's tree. On his way back to latch Tante's door, Kris Kringle saw the mess and turned it into tinsel. Tante loved her gift of Christmas magic and she always made a little room for the spiders to enjoy Christmas after that too!


My outfit is inspired by a Hummel Doll.





Laminated cards with a printed spider web. The glue will peel off once it's dry (takes about a day to dry).* Then the spider web can be hung on a Christmas tree for decoration. They LOVED making these! They're super simple, but fun too :)


All glued and ready for glitter! When it's dry, it'll peel off of the card and can be hung on the tree like an ornament.

*A neighbor showed me a cute craft using puffy paint to make your very own window cling snowflakes. Puffy paint is too expensive to use on a project for 130 students, so I tried it with glue and it worked! The students all wrote their names on the card with magic marker. I put each classes spider webs in a different spot so we'd know whose is whose tomorrow.